YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE  WARS 


HILDA 

in  her  motor-ambulance  uniform  wearing  the  "Order  of 
Leopold  II,"  conferred  on  her  by  King  Albert  in  person. 


YOUNG    HILDA 
AT  THE  WARS 


BY 

ARTHUR  H.  GLEASON 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  SPIRIT  OF  CHRISTMAS" 
"  LOVE,  HOME  AND  THE  INNER  LIFE,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 


AU  rights  reserved,  including  that  of  translation 
into  foreign  languages 


September,  1915 


TO 
CHEVALIER   HELEN   OF   PERVYSE 


2135803 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

EXPERIENCE  (by  way  of  Preface) .      .  1 

I.    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE  WARS       .     .  5 

Goodwill 37 

II.    THE  RIBBONS  THAT   STUCK  IN  His 

COAT 39 

The  Belgian  Refugee     ....  59 

III.  ROLLO,  THE  APOLLO 63 

The  Brotherhood  of  Man    ...  91 

IV.  THE  PIANO  OF  PERVYSE    ....  93 

Lost 113 

V.     WAR 115 

In  Ramskappele  Barnyard      .      .  141 

VI.    THE  CHEVALIER 143 

With  the  Ambulance      ....  163 

VII.    THE  AMERICAN 165 

The  Bonfire 189 

VIII.    THE  WAR  BABY  191 


EXPERIENCE 

(By  way  of  Preface) 

F  these  sketches  that  tell  of  ruined 
Belgium,  I  must  say  that  I  saw 
what  I  have  told  of.  They  are 
not  meditations  in  a  library.  Because 
of  the  great  courtesy  of  the  Prime  Min- 
ister of  Belgium,  who  is  the  war  minister, 
and  through  the  daily  companionship 
of  his  son,  our  little  group  of  helpers 
were  permitted  to  go  where  no  one  else 
could  go,  to  pass  in  under  shell  fire,  to 
see  action,  to  lift  the  wounded  out  of  the 
muddy  siding  where  they  had  fallen. 
Ten  weeks  of  Red  Cross  work  showed 
me  those  faces  and  torn  bodies  which 
I  have  described.  The  only  details  that 
have  been  altered  for  the  purpose  of  story- 
telling are  these:  The  Doctor  who  rescued 
the  thirty  aged  at  Dixmude  is  still  alive; 
Smith  did  not  receive  the  decoration,  but 


2     YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

Hilda  did;  it  was  a  candlestick  on  the  piano 
of  Pervyse  that  vibrated  to  shell  fire; 
the  spy  continues  to  signal  without  being 
caught;  "Pervyse,"  the  war-baby,  was  not 
adopted  by  an  American  financier;  motor 
ambulances  were  given  to  the  Corps,  not  to 
an  individual.  With  these  exceptions,  the 
incidents  are  lifted  over  from  the  experience 
of  two  English  women  and  my  wife  in 
Pervyse,  and  my  own  weeks  as  stretcher- 
bearer  on  an  ambulance. 

In  that  deadlock  of  slaughter  where  I 
worked,  I  saw  no  pageantry  of  war,  no 
glitter  and  pomp,  at  all.  Nothing  re- 
mains to  me  of  war  pictures  except  the 
bleakness.  When  I  think  suddenly  of 
Belgium,  I  see  a  town  heavy  with  the 
coming  horror: — almost  all  the  houses 
sealed,  the  curtains  drawn,  the  friendly 
door  barred.  And  then  I  see  a  town  after 
the  invaders  have  shelled  it  and  burned 
it,  with  the  homeless  dogs  howling  in  the 
streets,  and  the  pigeons  circling  in  search 
of  their  cote,  but  not  finding  it.  Or  I 


EXPERIENCE  3 

look  down  a  long,  lonely  road,  gutted 
with  shell  holes,  with  dead  cattle  in  the 
fields,  and  farm-houses  in  a  heap  of 
broken  bricks  and  dust. 

And  when  I  do  not  see  a  landscape, 
dreary  with  its  creeping  ruin,  I  see  men 
in  pain.  Sometimes  I  see  the  faces  of 
dead  boys  —  one  boy  outstretched  at 
length  on  a  doorstep  with  the  smoke 
of  his  burning  body  rising  through  the 
mesh  of  his  blue  army  clothing;  and  then 
a  half  mile  beyond,  in  the  yard  of  a  farm- 
house, a  young  peasant  spread  out  as 
he  had  fallen  when  the  chance  bullet 
found  him. 

That  alone  which  seemed  good  in  the 
horror  was  the  courage  of  the  modern  man. 
He  dies  as  simply  and  as  bravely  as  the 
young  of  Thermopylae.  These  men  of  the 
factory  and  office  are  crowding  more  mean- 
ing into  their  brief  weeks  by  the  Yser  and 
under  the  shattering  of  Ypres  than  is  con- 
tained in  all  the  last  half  century  of  clerk 
routine. 


I 

YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE  WARS 

HE  was  an  American  girl  from  that 
very  energetic  and  prosperous  state 
of  Iowa,  which  if  not  as  yet  the 
mother  of  presidents,  is  at  least  the 
parent  of  many  exuberant  and  useful 
persons.  Will  power  is  grown  out  yonder 
as  one  of  the  crops.  She  had  a  will  of 
her  own  and  her  eye  showed  a  blue 
cerulean.  Her  hair  was  a  bright  yellow, 
lighting  up  a  gloomy  room.  It  had 
three  shades  in  it,  and  you  never  knew 
ahead  of  time  which  shade  was  going  to 
enrich  the  day,  so  that  an  encounter 
with  her  always  carried  a  surprise.  For 
when  she  arranged  that  abundance  in 
soft  nun-like  drooping  folds  along  the 
side  of  the  head,  the  quieter  tones  were 
in  command.  And  when  it  was  piled 


6     YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

coil  on  coil  on  the  crown,  it  added  inches 
to  the  prairie  stature,  and  it  was  mellow 
like  ripe  corn  in  the  sun.  But  the  pretti- 
est of  all  was  at  the  seashore  or  on  the 
hills,  when  she  unbuckled  it  from  its 
moorings  and  let  it  fall  in  its  plenty 
to  the  waist.  Then  its  changing  lights 
came  out  in  a  rippling  play  of  color, 
and  the  winds  had  their  way  with  it.  It 
was  then  youth's  battleflag  unfurled,  and 
strong  men  were  ready  to  follow.  It  was 
such  a  vivid  possession  that  strangers 
were  always  suspicious  of  it,  till  they 
knew  the  girl,  or  saw  it  in  its  unshackled 
freedom.  She  had  that  wayward  quality 
of  charm,  which  visits  at  random  a  frail 
creature  like  Maude  Adams,  and  a  burly 
personality,  such  as  that  of  Mr.  Roose- 
velt. It  is  a  pleasant  endowment,  for 
it  leaves  nothing  for  the  possessor  to 
do  in  life  except  to  bring  it  along,  in 
order  to  obtain  what  he  is  asking  for. 
When  it  is  harnessed  to  will  power,  the 
pair  of  them  enjoy  a  career. 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS     7 

So  when  Hilda  arrived  in  large  London 
in  September  of  the  great  war,  there  was 
nothing  for  it  but  that  somehow  she  must 
go  to  war.  She  did  not  wish  to  shoot 
anybody,  neither  a  German  grocer  nor 
a  Flemish  peasant,  for  she  liked  people. 
She  had  always  found  them  willing  to 
make  a  place  for  her  in  whatever  was 
going  her  way.  But  she  did  want  to 
see  what  war  was  like.  Her  experience 
had  always  been  of  the  gentler  order. 
Canoeing  and  country  walks,  and  a 
flexible  wrist  in  playing  had  given  her 
only  a  meagre  training  for  the  stresses 
of  the  modern  battlefield.  Once  she  had 
fainted  when  a  favorite  aunt  had  fallen 
from  a  trolley  car.  And  she  had  left 
the  room  when  a  valued  friend  had  at- 
tacked a  stiff  loaf  of  bread  with  a  crust 
that  turned  the  edge  of  the  knife  into 
his  hand.  She  had  not  then  made  her 
peace  with  bloodshed  and  suffering. 

On  the  Strand,  London,  there  was  a 
group  of  alert  professional  women,  housed 


8     YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

in  a  theatre  building,  and  known  as  the 
Women's  Crisis  League.  To  their  office 
she  took  her  way,  determined  to  en- 
list for  Belgium.  Mrs.  Bracher  was  in 
charge  of  the  office  —  a  woman  with  a 
stern  chin,  and  an  explosive  energy, 
that  welcomed  initiative  in  newcomers. 

"It's  a  poor  time  to  get  pupils,"  said 
the  fair-haired  Hilda,  "I  don't  want  to 
go  back  to  the  Studio  Club  in  New 
York,  as  long  as  there's  more  doing  over 
here.  I'm  out  of  funds,  but  I  want  to 
work." 

"Are  you  a  trained  nurse?"  asked 
Mrs.  Bracher,  who  was  that,  as  well 
as  a  motor  cyclist  and  a  woman  of 
property,  a  certificated  midwife,  and  a 
veterinarian. 

"Not  even  a  little  bit,"  replied  Hilda, 
"but  I'm  ready  to  do  dirty  work.  There 
must  be  lots  to  do  for  an  untrained 
person,  who  is  strong  and  used  to  rough- 
ing it.  I'll  catch  hold  all  right,  if  you'll 
give  me  the  chance." 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS     9 

"Right,  oh,"  answered  Mrs.  Bracher. 
"Dr.  Neil  McDonnell  is  shortly  leaving 
for  Belgium  with  a  motor-ambulance 
Corps,"  she  said,  "but  he  has  hundreds 
of  applications,  and  his  list  is  probably 
completed." 

"Thank  you,"  said  Hilda,  "that  will 
do  nicely." 

"I  don't  mind  telling  you,"  continued 
Mrs.  Bracher,  "that  I  shall  probably 
go  with  him  to  the  front.  I  hope  he 
will  accept  you,  but  there  are  many 
ahead  of  you  in  applying,  and  he  has 
already  promised  more  than  he  can 
take." 

Hilda  took  a  taxi  from  St.  Mary  Le 
Strand  to  Harley  Street.  Dr.  Neil  Mc- 
Donnell was  a  dapper  mystical  little 
specialist,  who  was  renowned  for  his 
applications  of  psychotherapy  to  raging 
militants  and  weary  society  leader..  He 
was  a  Scottish  Highlander,  with  a  rare 
gift  of  intuitive  insight.  He,  too,  had 
the  agreeable  quality  of  personal  charm. 


10  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

Like  all  to  whom  the  gods  have  been 
good,  he  looked  with  a  favoring  eye  on 
the  spectacle  of  youth. 

'You  come  from  a  country  which  will 
one  day  produce  the  choicest  race  in 
history,"  he  began,  "you  have  a  blend  of 
nationalities.  We  have  a  little  corner 
in  Scotland  where  several  strains  were 
merged,  and  the  men  were  finer  and  the 
women  fairer  than  the  average.  But 
as  for  going  to  Belgium,  I  must  tell  you 
that  we  have  many  more  desiring  to  go 
than  we  can  possibly  find  room  for." 

"That  is  why  I  came  to  you,"  re- 
sponded Hilda.  "That  means  competi- 
tion, and  then  you  will  have  to  choose 
the  youngest  and  strongest." 

"I  can  promise  you  nothing,"  went  on 
the  Doctor;  "I  am  afraid  it  is  quite 
impossible.  But  if  you  care  to  do  it, 
keep  in  touch  with  me  for  the  next 
fortnight.  Send  me  an  occasional  letter. 
Call  me  up,  if  you  will." 

She    did.     She    sent    him     telegrams, 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS   11 

letters  by  the  "Boots"  in  her  lodging- 
house.  She  called  upon  him.  She  took 
Mrs.  Bracher  with  her. 

And  that  was  how  Hilda  came  to  go 
to  Flanders.  When  the  Corps  crossed 
from  happy  unawakened  London  to  for- 
lorn Belgium,  they  felt  lost.  How  to 
take  hold,  they  did  not  know.  There 
were  the  cars,  and  here  were  the  workers, 
but  just  what  do  you  do? 

Their  first  weeks  were  at  Ghent,  rather 
wild,  disheveled  weeks  of  clutching  at  work. 
They  had  one  objective:  the  battlefield;  one 
purpose:  to  make  a  series  of  rescues  under 
fire.  Cramped  in  a  placid  land,  smothered 
by  peace-loving  folk,  they  had  been  set 
quivering  by  the  war.  The  time  had  come 
to  throw  themselves  at  the  Continent,  and 
do  or  die  where  action  was  thick.  Nothing 
was  quainter,  even  in  a  land  of  astounding 
spectacles,  than  the  sight  of  the  rescuing 
ambulances  rolling  out  to  the  wounded  of  a 
morning,  loaded  to  the  gunwale  with  charm- 


12  YOUNG    HILDA   AT   THE    WARS 

ing  women  and  several  men.  "  Where  will 
they  put  the  wounded?"  was  the  query 
that  sprang  to  every  lip  that  gaped  at  their 
passing.  There  was  room  for  everybody 
but  wounded.  Fortunately  there  were  few 
wounded  in  those  early  days  when  rescuers 
tingled  for  the  chance  to  serve  and  see.  So 
the  Ghent  experience  was  a  probation  rather 
than  a  fulfilled  success.  Then  the  enemy 
descended  from  fallen  Antwerp,  and  the 
Corps  sped  away,  ahead  of  the  vast  gray 
Prussian  machine,  through  Bruges  and 
Ostend,  to  Furnes.  Here,  too,  in  Fumes, 
the  Corps  was  still  trying  to  find  its  place 
in  the  immense  and  intricate  scheme  of  war. 
The  man  that  saved  them  from  their 
fogged  incertitude  was  a  Belgian  doctor,  a 
military  Red  Cross  worker.  The  first  flash 
of  him  was  of  a  small  silent  man,  not 
significant.  But  when  you  had  been 
with  him,  you  felt  reserves  of  force. 
That  small  person  had  a  will  of  his  own. 
He  was  thirty-one  years  of  age,  with 
a  thoughtful  but  kindly  face.  His  eye 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS   13 

had  pleasant  lights  in  it,  and  a  twinkle 
of  humor.  His  voice  was  low  and  even- 
toned.  He  lifted  the  wounded  in  from 
the  trenches,  dressed  their  wounds,  ajid 
sent  them  back  to  the  base  hospitals. 
He  was  regimental  dentist  as  well  as 
Doctor,  and  accompanied  his  men  from 
point  to  point,  along  the  battlefront 
from  the  sea  to  the  frontier.  Van  der 
Helde  was  his  name.  He  called  on  the 
Corps  soon  after  their  arrival  in  Fumes, 
one  of  the  last  bits  of  Belgian  soil  un- 
occupied by  the  invaders. 

'You  are  wandering  about  like  lost 
souls,"  he  said  to  them;  "let  me  tell 
you  how  to  get  to  work." 

He  did  so.  As  the  results  of  his 
suggestions,  the  six  motor  ambulances 
and  four  touring  cars  ran  out  each  morn- 
ing to  the  long  thin  line  of  troops  that 
lay  burrowed  in  the  wet  earth,  all  the 
way  from  the  Baths  of  Nieuport-on-the- 
Sea  down  through  the  shelled  villages 
of  the  Ramskappele-Dixmude  frontier 


14   YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

to  the  beautiful  ancient  city  of  Ypres. 
The  cars  returned  with  their  patient 
freight  of  wounded  through  the  afternoon 
and  evening. 

What  had  begun  as  an  adventure 
deepened  to  a  grim  fight  against  blood- 
poisoning  and  long-continuing  exposure 
and  hunger.  Hilda  learned  to  drop 
the  antiseptic  into  open  wounds,  to  ap- 
ply the  pad,  and  roll  the  cotton.  She 
learned  to  cut  away  the  heavy  army 
blue  cloth  to  reach  the  spurting  artery. 
She  built  the  fire  that  heated  the  soup. 
She  distributed  the  clean  warm  socks. 
Doubtless  someone  else  could  have  done 
the  work  more  skilfully,  but  the  someone 
else  was  across  the  water  in  a  comfortable 
country  house,  or  watching  the  Russian 
dancers  at  the  Coliseum. 

The  leader  of  the  Corps,  Dr.  McDon- 
nell, was  an  absurdly  brave  little  man. 
His  heart  may  not  have  been  in  the 
Highlands,  but  his  mind  certainly  was, 
for  he  led  his  staff  into  shell  fire,  week- 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS   15 

days  and  Sundays,  and  all  with  a  fine 
unconsciousness  that  anything  unusual 
was  singing  and  breaking  around  the 
path  of  their  performance.  He  carried 
a  pocket  edition  of  the  Oxford  Book  of 
Verse,  and  in  the  lulls  of  slaughter  turned 
to  the  Wordsworth  sonnets  with  a  fine 
relish. 

"Something  is  going  to  happen.  I 
can  feel  it  coming,"  said  Mrs.  Bracher 
after  one  of  these  excursions  into  the 
troubled  regions. 

"Yes,"  agreed  Hilda,  "they  are  long 
chances  we  are  taking,  but  we  are  fools 
for  luck." 

A  famous  war  correspondent  paid 
them  a  fleeting  visit,  before  he  was  or- 
dered twenty  miles  back  to  Dunkirk  by 
Kitchener. 

"By  the  law  of  probabilities,"  he 
observed  to  Dr.  McDonnell,  as  he  was 
saying  good-bye,  "you  and  your  staff 
are  going  to  be  wiped  out,  if  you  keep 
on  running  your  motors  into  excitement." 


16    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

The  Doctor  smiled.  It  was  doubtful 
if  he  heard  the  man. 

One  day,  the  Doctor  got  hold  of  Smith, 
a  London  boy  driver,  and  Hilda,  and 
said: 

"I  think  we  would  better  visit  Dix- 
mude,  this  morning.  It  sounds  like  guns 
in  that  direction.  That  means  work  for 
us.  Get  your  hat,  my  dear." 

"But  I  never  wear  a  hat,"  she  said 
with  a  touch  of  irritation. 

"Ah,  I  hadn't  noticed,"  returned  the 
Doctor,  and  he  hadn't.  Hilda  went  free 
and  fair  those  days,  with  uncovered 
head.  Where  the  men  went,  there  went 
she.  For  the  modern  woman  has  put 
aside  fear  along  with  the  other  impedi- 
ments. The  Doctor  and  Hilda,  and, 
lastly,  Smith,  climbed  aboard  and  started 
at  fair  speed. 

Smith's  motor-ambulance  was  a  swift 
machine,  canopied  by  a  brown  hood, 
the  color  of  a  Mediterranean  sail,  with 
red  crosses  on  the  sides  to  ward  off  shells, 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE  WARS    17 

and  a  huge  red  cross  on  the  top  to 
claim  immunity  from  aeroplanes  with 
bombs  and  plumbed  arrows. 

"Make  haste,  make  haste,"  urged  Dr. 
McDonnell,  who  felt  all  time  was  wasted 
that  was  not  spent  where  the  air  was 
thick.  They  had  ridden  for  a  half  hour. 

"There  are  limits,  sir,"  replied  Smith. 
"If  you  will  look  at  that  piece  of  road 
ahead,  sir,  you  will  see  that  it's  been 
chewed  up  with  Jack  Johnsons.  It's 
hard  on  the  machine." 

But  the  Doctor's  attention  was  already 
far  away,  for  he  had  been  seized  with 
the  beauty  of  the  fresh  spring  morning. 
There  was  a  tang  in  the  air,  and  sense 
of  awakening  life  in  the  ground,  which 
not  all  the  bleakness  of  the  wasted  farms 
and  the  dead  bodies  of  cattle  could 
obscure  for  him. 

"Isn't  that  pretty,"  he  observed,  as 
a  shrapnel  exploded  overhead  in  the  blue 
with  that  ping  with  which  it  breaks  its 
casing  and  releases  the  pattering  bullets. 


18    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

It  unfolded  itself  in  a  little  white  cloud, 
which  hung  motionless  for  an  instant 
before  the  winds  of  the  morning  shred- 
ded it. 

To  Hilda  the  sensation  of  being  under 
fire  was  always  exhilarating.  The 
thought  of  personal  peril  never  entered 
her  head.  The  verse  of  a  favorite  gypsy 
song  often  came  into  her  memory  these 
days : — 

"I  am  breath,  dew,  all  resources. 
Laughing  in  your  face,  I  cry 
Would  ye  kill  me,  save  your  forces. 
Why  kill  me,  who  cannot  die." 

They  swept  on  to  Oudekappele  and  its 
stout  stone  church,  where  lonely  in  the 
tower,  the  watcher,  leaning  earthward, 
told  off  his  observations  of  the  enemy 
to  a  soldier  in  the  rafters,  who  passed 
them  to  another  on  the  ladder,  who 
dropped  them  to  another  on  the  stone 
floor,  who  hurried  them  to  an  officer  at 
the  telephone  in  the  west  front,  who 
spoke  them  to  a  battery  one  mile  away. 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    19 

They  took  the  poplar-lined  drive-way 
that  leads  to  the  crossroads.  They 
turned  east,  and  made  for  Caeskerke. 
And  now  Smith  let  out  his  engine,  for 
it  is  not  wise  to  delay  along  a  road  that 
is  in  clear  sight  and  range  of  active 
guns.  At  Caeskerke  station,  they 
halted  for  reports  on  the  situation  in 
Dixmude. 

There,  they  saw  their  good  friend, 
Dr.  van  der  Helde,  in  the  little 
group  behind  the  wooden  building  of 
the  station. 

"I  have  just  come  from  Dixmude," 
he  said;  "it  is  under  a  fairly  heavy 
fire.  The  Hospital  of  St.  Jean  is  up 
by  the  trenches.  I  have  thirty  poor  old 
people  there,  who  were  left  in  the  town 
when  the  bombardment  started.  They 
have  been  under  shell  fire  for  four  days, 
and  their  nerves  are  gone.  They  are 
paralyzed  with  fright,  and  cannot  walk. 
I  brought  them  to  the  hospital  from  the 
cellars  where  they  were  hiding.  I  have 


20    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

come  back  here  to  try  to  get  cars  to  take 
them  to  Fumes.  Will  you  help  me  get 
them?" 

"That's  what  we're  here  for,"  said 
Dr.  McDonnell. 

"Thank  you,"  said  the  Belgian  quietly. 
"Shall  we  not  leave  the  lady?"  he 
suggested,  turning  to  Hilda. 

"Try  it,"  she  replied  with  a  smile. 

Dr.  van  der  Helde  jumped  aboard. 

"And  you  mean  to  tell  me  you 
couldn't  get  hold  of  an  army  car  to  help 
you  out,  all  this  time?"  asked  Dr. 
McDonnell,  in  amazement. 

"Orders  were  strict,"  replied  the  Bel- 
gian; "the  military  considered  it  too 
dangerous  to  risk  an  ambulance." 

They  had  entered  the  town  of  Dix- 
mude.  Hilda  had  never  seen  so  thorough 
a  piece  of  ruin.  Walls  of  houses  had 
crumbled  out  upon  the  street  into  heaps 
of  brick  and  red  dust.  Stumps  of  build- 
ing still  stood,  blackened  down  their 
surface,  as  if  lightning  had  visited  them. 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS    21 

Wire  that  had  once  been  telegraph  and 
telephone  crawled  over  the  piles  of  wreck- 
age, like  a  thin  blue  snake.  The  car 
grazed  a  large  pig,  that  had  lost  its  pen 
and  trough  and  was  scampering  wildly 
at  each  fresh  detonation  from  the  never- 
ceasing  guns. 

"It's  a  bit  warm,"  said  Smith,  as  a 
piece  of  twisted  metal,  the  size  of  a 
man's  fist,  dropped  by  the  front  wheel. 

"That  is  nothing,"  returned  Dr.  van 
der  Helde. 

They  had  to  slow  up  three  times  for 
heaps  of  ruin  that  had  spread  across  the 
road.  They  reached  the  Hospital.  It 
still  stood  unbroken.  It  had  been  a 
convent,  till  Dr.  van  der  Helde  com- 
mandeered it  to  the  reception  of  his 
cases.  He  led  them  to  the  hall.  There 
down  the  long  corridor  were  seated  the 
aged  poor  of  Dixmude.  Not  one  of  the 
patient  creatures  was  younger  than  sev- 
enty. Some  looked  to  be  over  eighty. 
WTiite-haired  men  and  women,  bent  over, 


22    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

shaking  from  head  to  foot,  muttering. 
Most  of  them  looked  down  at  the 
floor.  It  seemed  as  if  they  would  con- 
tinue there  rooted,  like  some  ancient 
lichen  growth  in  a  forest.  A  few  of 
them  looked  up  at  the  visitors,  with  eyes 
in  which  there  was  little  light.  No 
glimmer  of  recognition  altered  the  expres- 
sion of  dim  horror. 

"Come,"  said  Dr.  van  der  Helde, 
firmly  but  kindly,  "come,  old  man.  We 
are  going  to  take  you  to  a  quiet 
place." 

The  one  whom  he  touched  and 
addressed  shook  his  head  and  settled 
to  the  same  apathy  which  held  the 
group. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Dr.  van  der  Helde, 
"you'll  be  all  right." 

He  and  Smith  and  Dr.  McDonnell 
caught  hold  of  the  inert  body  and  lifted 
it  to  the  car.  Two  old  women  and 
one  more  aged  man  they  carried  from 
that  hall-way  of  despair  to  the  motor 


YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    23 

which  had  been  left  throbbing  under 
power. 

"Will  you  come  back?"  asked  Dr. 
van  der  Helde. 

"As  soon  as  we  have  found  a  place 
for  them,"  replied  Dr.  McDonnell. 

The  car  pulled  out  of  the  hospital 
yard  and  ran  uninjured  through  the 
town.  The  firing  was  intermittent,  now. 
Two  miles  back  at  the  cross-roads,  four 
army  ambulances  were  drawn  up  waiting 
for  orders. 

"Come  on  in.  The  water's  fine,"  cried 
Hilda  to  the  drivers. 

"Comment?"  asked  one  of  them. 

"Why  don't  you  go  into  Dixmude?" 
she  explained.  :<  There  are  twenty-six 
old  people  in  St.  Jean  there.  We've 
got  four  of  them  here." 

The  drivers  received  an  order  of  release 
from  their  commanding  officer,  and 
streamed  into  the  doomed  town  and  on 
to  the  yard  of  the  hospital.  In  two 
hours  they  had  emptied  it  of  its  misery. 


24    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

At  Oudekappele  Hilda  found  a  room  in 
the  little  inn,  and  made  the  old  people 
comfortable.  At  noon,  Dr.  van  der 
Helde  joined  her  there,  and  they  had 
luncheon  together  out  of  the  ample 
stores  under  the  seat  of  the  ambulance. 
Up  to  this  day,  Doctor  van  der  Helde 
had  always  been  reserved.  But  the  brisk 
affair  had  unlocked  something  in  his 
hushed  preserves. 

"It  is  a  sight  for  tired  eyes,"  said  the 
gallant  doctor,  "to  see  such  hair  in  these 
parts.  You  bring  me  a  pleasure." 

"I  am  glad  you  like  it,"  returned 
Hilda. 

"Oh,  it  is  better  than  that,"  retorted 
the  Doctor,  "I  love  it.  It  brings  good 
luck,  you  know.  Beautiful  hair  brings 
good  luck." 

"I  never  heard  that,"  said  Hilda. 

That  night,  for  the  first  time  since 
the  hidden  guns  had  marked  Dixmude 
for  their  own,  the  Doctor  slept  in  secur- 
ity ten  kilometers  back  of  the  trenches. 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    25 

That    night    a    shell    struck    the    empty 
hospital  of  Si.  Jean  and  wrecked  it. 

"Well,  have  you  worked  out  a  plan 
to  cure  this  idleness,"  said  Mrs.  Bracher, 
thundering  into  the  room,  like  a  charge 
of  cavalry.  "I've  done  nothing  but  cut 
buttons  off  army  coats,  all  day." 

"Such  a  day,"  said  Hilda,  "yes,  we've 
got  a  plan.  We  met  Dr.  van  der  Helde 
again  to-day.  He  is  a  brave  man,  and 
he  is  very  pleasant,  too.  He  has  been 
working  in  Dixmude,  but  no  one  is  there 
any  more,  and  he  wants  to  start  a  new 
post.  He  wants  to  go  to  Pervyse,  and 
he  wishes  you  and  Scotch  and  me  to 
go  with  him  and  run  a  dressing-station 
for  the  soldiers." 

"Pervyse!"  cried  Mrs.  Bracher.  "Why, 
my  dear  girl,  Pervyse  is  nothing  but  a 
rubbish  heap.  They've  shot  it  to  pieces. 
There's  no  one  at  Pervyse." 

"The  soldiers  are  there,"  replied  Hilda; 
"they  come  in  from  the  trenches  with  a 


26    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

finger  off  or  a  flesh  wound.  They  are 
full  of  colds  from  all  the  wet  weather 
we  had  last  month.  They  haven't  half 
enough  to  eat.  They  need  warm  soup 
and  coffee  after  a  night  out  on  duty. 
Oh,  there's  lots  to  do.  Will  you  do  it?" 

"Certainly,"  said  Mrs.  Bracher.  "How 
about  you,  Scotch?" 

Scotch  was  a  charming  maiden  of  the 
same  land  as  Dr.  McDonnell.  She  was 
the  silent  member  of  a  noisy  group,  but 
there  was  none  of  the  active  work  that 
she  missed. 

"Wake  up,  Scotch,"  said  Hilda,  "and 
tell  us.  Will  you  go  to  Pervyse  and 
stay?  Mrs.  Bracher  and  I  are  going." 

"Me,  too,"  said  Scotch. 

The  next  day,  Dr.  van  der  Helde 
called  for  them,  and  they  motored  the 
seven  miles  to  Pervyse.  What  Dixinude 
was  on  a  large  scale,  that  was  Pervyse 
in  small.  A  once  lovely  village  had 
been  made  into  a  black  waste.  On  the 
main  streets,  not  one  house  had  been 


YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS    27 

left  unwrecked.  They  found  a  roomy 
cellar,  under  a  house  that  had  two  walls 
standing.  Here  they  installed  themselves 
with  sleeping  bags,  a  soup  kitchen, 
and  a  kit  of  first-aid-to-the-injured 
apparatus. 

Then  began  for  Hilda  the  most  spir- 
ited days  of  her  life.  They  had  callers 
from  all  the  world  at  seasons  when  there 
was  quiet  in  the  district.  Maxine  Elliot, 
Prince  Alexander  of  Teck,  Generals,  the 
Queen  of  the  Belgians,  labor  leaders  — 
so  ran  the  visiting  list.  The  sorrow  that 
was  Belgium  had  become  famous,  and 
this  cellar  of  loyal  women  in  Pervyse  was 
one  of  the  few  spots  left  on  Belgium  soil 
where  work  was  being  done  for  the  little 
hunted  field  army. 

The  days  were  filled  with  care  of  the 
hurt,  and  food  for  the  hungry,  and  cloth- 
ing for  the  dilapidated.  And  the  nights 
-  she  knew  she  would  not  forget  those 
nights,  when  the  three  of  them  took  turns 
in  nursing  the  wounded  men  resting  on 


28    YOUNG  HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

stretchers.  The  straw  would  crackle 
as  the  sleepers  turned.  The  faint 
yellow  light  from  the  lantern  threw 
shadows  on  the  unconscious  faces.  And 
she  was  glad  of  the  smile  of  the  men  in 
pain,  as  they  received  a  little  comfort. 
She  had  never  known  there  was  such 
goodness  in  human  nature.  Who  was 
she  ever  to  be  impatient  again,  when 
these  men  in  extremity  could  remember 
to  thank  her.  Here  in  this  worst  of  the 
evils,  this  horror  of  war,  men  were  mani- 
festing a  humanity,  a  consideration,  at 
a  higher  level  than  she  felt  she  had  ever 
shown  it  in  happy  surroundings  in  a 
peaceful  land.  Hilda  won  the  sense, 
which  was  to  be  of  abiding  good  to  her, 
that  at  last  she  had  justified  her  existence. 
She,  too,  was  now  helping  to  continue 
that  great  tradition  of  human  kindness 
which  had  made  this  world  a  more 
decent  place  to  live  in.  No  one  could 
any  longer  say  she  was  only  a  poor  artist 
in  an  age  of  big  things.  Had  not  the 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    29 

poor  artist,  in  her  own  way,  served  the 
general  welfare,  quite  as  effectively,  as 
if  she  had  projected  a  new  breakfast 
food,  or  made  a  successful  marriage.  Her 
fingers,  which  had  not  gathered  much 
gold,  had  at  least  been  found  fit  to  lessen 
some  human  misery.  In  that  strength 
she  grew  confident. 

As  the  fair  spring  days  came  back  and 
green  began  to  put  out  from  the  fields, 
the  soldiers  returned  to  their  duty. 

Now  the  killing  became  brisk  again. 
The  cellar  ran  full  with  its  tally  of 
scotched  and  crippled  men.  Dr.  van 
der  Helde  was  in  command  of  the  work. 
He  was  here  and  there  and  everywhere  — 
in  the  trenches  at  daybreak,  and  gather- 
ing the  harvest  of  wounded  in  the  fields 
after  nightfall.  Sometimes  he  would  be 
away  for  three  days  on  end.  He  would 
run  up  and  down  the  lines  for  seven 
miles,  watching  the  work.  The  Belgian 
nation  was  a  race  of  individualists,  each 
man  merrily  minding  his  own  business 


30    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

in  his  own  way.  The  Belgian  army 
was  a  volunteer  informal  group  of  sepa- 
rate individuals.  The  Doctor  was  an 
individualist.  So  the  days  went  by  at 
a  tense  swift  stride,  stranger  than  any- 
thing in  the  story-books. 

One  morning  the  Doctor  entered  the 
cellar,  with  a  troubled  look  on  his 
face. 

"I  am  forced  to  ask  you  to  do  some- 
thing," began  he,  "and  yet  I  hardly  have 
the  heart  to  tell  you." 

"What  can  the  man  be  after,"  queried 
Hilda,  "will  you  be  wanting  to  borrow 
my  hair  brush  to  curry  the  cavalry 
with?" 

"Worse  than  that,"  responded  he;  "I 
must  ask  you  to  cut  off  your  beautiful 
hair." 

"My  hair,"  gasped  Hilda,  darting  her 
hand  to  her  head,  and  giving  the  locks 
an  unconscious  pat. 

"Your  hair,"  replied  the  Doctor.  "It 
breaks  my  heart  to  make  you  do  it, 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    31 

but  there's  so  much  disease  floating 
around  in  the  air  these  days,  that  it  is 
too  great  a  risk  for  you  to  live  with  sick 
men  day  and  night  and  carry  all  that 
to  gather  germs." 

"I  see,"  said  Hilda  in  a  subdued 
tone. 

"One  thing  I  will  ask,  that  you  give 
me  a  lock  of  it,"  he  added  quietly.  She 
thought  he  was  jesting  with  his  request. 

That  afternoon  she  went  to  her  cellar, 
and  took  the  faithful  shears  which  had 
severed  so  many  bandages,  and  put 
them  pitilessly  at  work  on  her  crown  of 
beauty.  The  hair  fell  to  the  ground  in 
rich  strands,  darker  by  a  little,  and 
softer  far,  than  the  straw  on  which  it 
rested.  Then  she  gathered  it  up  into 
one  of  the  aged  illustrated  papers  that 
had  drifted  out  to  the  post  from  kind 
friends  in  Furnes.  She  wrapped  it 
tightly  inside  the  double  page  picture 
of  laughing  soldiers,  celebrating  Christ- 
mas in  the  trenches.  And  she  carried 


32    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE  WARS 

it  outside  behind  the  black  stump  of  a 
house  which  they  called  their  home,  and 
threw  it  on  the  cans  that  had  once 
contained  bully-beef.  She  was  a  little 
heart-sick  at  her  loss,  but  she  had  no 
vanity.  As  she  was  stepping  inside,  the 
Doctor  came  down  the  road. 

He  stopped  at  sight  of  her. 

"Oh,  I  am  sorry,"  he  said. 

"I  don't  care,"  she  answered,  and 
braved  it  off  by  a  little  flaunt  of  her 
head,  though  there  was  a  film  over  her 
eyes. 

"And  did  you  keep  a  lock  for  me?" 
he  asked. 

"You  are  joking,"  she  replied. 

"I  was  never  more  serious,"  he  re- 
turned. She  shook  her  head,  and  went 
down  into  the  cellar.  The  Doctor 
walked  around  to  the  rear  of  the  house. 

A  few  minutes  later,  he  entered  the 
cellar. 

"Good-bye,"  he  said,  holding  out  his 
hand,  "I'm  going  up  the  line  to  Nieu- 


YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    33 

port.  I'll  be  back  in  the  morning.'*  He 
turned  to  climb  the  steps,  and  then 
paused  a  moment. 

"Beautiful  hair  brings  good  luck,"  he 
said. 

"Then  my  luck's  gone,"  returned 
Hilda. 

"But  mine  hasn't,"  he  answered. 

"Let  us  go  up  the  road  this  morning," 
suggested  Mrs.  Bracher,  next  day,  "and 
see  how  the  new  men  are  getting  on." 

There  was  a  line  of  trenches  to  the 
north,  where  reinforcements  had  just 
come  in,  all  their  old  friends  having  been 
ordered  back  to  Furnes  for  a  rest. 

"How  loud  the  shells  are,  this  morn- 
ing," said  Hilda.  There  were  whole  days 
when  she  did  not  notice  them,  so  accus- 
tomed the  senses  grow  to  a  repetition. 

'Yes,  they're  giving  us  special  treat- 
ment just  now,"  replied  Mrs.  Bracher; 
"it's  that  six-inch  gun  over  behind 
the  farm-house,  trying  out  these  new 


34    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

men.  They're  gradually  getting  ready 
to  come  across.  It  will  only  be  a  few 
days  now." 

They  walked  up  the  road  a  hundred 
yards,  and  came  on  a  knot  of  sol- 
diers stooping  low  behind  the  roadside 
bank. 

"What  are  those  men  looking  at?" 
exclaimed  Mrs.  Bracher  sharply. 

"Some  poor  fellow.  Probably  work 
for  us,"  returned  Hilda. 

Mrs.  Bracher  went  nearer,  peered  at 
the  outstretched  form  on  the  grass  bank, 
then  turned  her  head  away  suddenly. 

"No  work  for  us,"  she  said.  "Don't 
go  near,  child.  It's  too  horrible.  His 
face  is  gone.  A  shell  must  have  taken  it 
away.  Oh,  I'm  sick  of  this  war.  I  am 
sick  of  these  sights." 

One  of  the  little  group  of  men  about 
the  body  had  drawn  near  to  her. 

"What  do  you  want?"  she  asked 
crossly,  as  a  woman  will  who  is  inter- 
rupted when  she  is  close  to  tears. 


YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS    35 

"Will  I  identify  him?"  she  repeated 
after  him.  "I  tell  you  I  never  saw  the 
man." 

A  little  gasp  of  amazement  came  from 
the  soldiers  about  the  body. 

"See  what  we  have  found,"  called  one 
of  the  men-  "in  his  pocket." 

It  was  a  lock  of  the  very  lightest  and 
gayest  of  hair. 

"Ah,  my  doctor,"  Hilda  cried. 

She  spread  the  lock  across  the  breast 
of  the  dead  man.  It  was  so  vivid  in  the 
morning  sun  as  to  seem  almost  a  living 
thing. 

"And  he  said  it  would  bring  him  luck," 
she  murmured. 


GOOD  WILL 

I  looked  into  the  face  of  my  brother. 
There  was  no  face  there,  only  a  red  interior. 
This  thing  had  been  done  to  my  brother,  the 
Belgian,  by  my  brother,  the  German.  He 
had  sent  a  splinter  of  shell  through  jive  miles 
of  sunlight,  hoping  it  would  do  some  such 
thing  as  this. 


II 

THE    RIBBONS    THAT    STUCK    IN 
HIS  COAT 

7 HE  little  group  was  gathered  in 
the  cellar  of  Pervyse.  An  occa- 
11  sional  shell  was  heard  in  the 
middle  distance,  as  artillery  beyond  the 
Yser  threw  a  lazy  feeler  over  to  the  rail- 
way station.  The  three  women  were 
entertaining  a  distinguished  guest  at  the 
evening  meal  of  tinned  rabbit  and  dates. 
Their  visitor  was  none  other  than  F. 
Ainslie-Barkleigh,  the  famous  English 
war-correspondent.  He  was  dressed  for 
the  part.  He  wore  high  top-boots,  whose 
red  leather  shone  richly  even  in  the  dim 
yellow  of  the  lantern  that  lit  them  to 
their  feast.  About  his  neck  was  swung 
a  heavy  black  strap  from  which  hung 
a  pair  of  very  elegant  field-glasses,  ready 
for  service  at  a  moment's  call.  He  could 


40    YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

sweep  a  battle-field  with  them,  or  expose 
a  hidden  battery,  or  rake  a  road.  From 
the  belt  that  made  his  jacket  shapely 
about  his  person,  there  depended  a  map 
of  the  district,  with  heavy  inked  red 
lines  for  the  position  of  friend  or  foe. 
He  was  a  tall  man,  with  an  immense 
head,  on  which  were  stuck,  like  after- 
thoughts, very  tiny  features  —  a  nose 
easily  overlooked,  a  thin  slit  of  a  mouth, 
and  small  inset  eyes.  All  the  upper  part 
of  him  was  overhanging  and  alarming, 
till  you  chanced  on  those  diminutive 
features.  It  was  as  if  his  growth  had 
been  terminated  before  it  reached  the 
expressive  parts.  He  had  an  elaborate 
manner  —  a  reticence,  a  drawl,  and  a 
chronic  irony.  Across  half  of  his  chest 
there  streaked  a  rainbow  of  color;  gay 
little  ribbons  of  decoration,  orange  and 
crimson  and  purple  and  white. 

Mrs.  Bracher,  sturdy,  iron- jawed,  and 
Scotch,  her  pretty  young  assistant,  sat 
opposite  him  at  table.  Hilda  did  the 


THE   RIBBONS   IN  HIS   COAT    41 

honors  by  sitting  next  him,  and  passing 
him  tins  of  provender,  as  required. 

"What  pretty  ribbons  you  wear,"  said 
Hilda.  "Where  did  you  get  them?" 

"Oh,  different  wars,"  returned  Bark- 
leigh  carelessly. 

"That's  modest,  but  it's  vague,"  urged 
Hilda.  "If  I  had  such  pretty  ribbons, 
I  should  have  the  case  letter  and  the 
exhibit  number  printed  on  each.  Now 
this  one,  for  instance.  What  happened 
to  set  this  fluttering?" 

"Oh,  that  one,"  he,  said,  nearly  twist- 
ing his  eyes  out  of  their  sockets  to  see 
which  one  her  fingers  had  lighted  on. 
"That's  one  the  Japs  gave  me." 

"  Thank  you  for  not  calling  them  the 
little  brown  people,"  returned  Hilda; 
"that  alone  would  merit  decoration  at 
their  hands.  And  this  gay  thing,  what 
principality  gave  you  this?" 

"That  came  from  somewhere  in  the 
Balkans.  I  always  did  get  those  states 
muddled  up." 


42    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"Incredible  haziness,"  responded  Hilda. 
"You  probably  know  the  exact  hour 
when  the  King  and  his  Chief  of  Staff 
called  you  out  on  the  Town-hall  steps. 
You  must  either  be  a  very  brave  man 
or  else  write  very  nice  articles  about  the 
ruling  powers." 

"The  latter,  of  course,"  returned  he, 
a  little  nettled. 

"Vain  as  a  peacock,"  whispered  Scotch 
to  the  ever-watchful  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"I  don't  understand  you  women," 
said  Ainslie-Barkleigh,  clearing  his  throat 
for  action.  But  Hilda  was  too  quick  for 
him. 

"I  know  you  don't,"  she  cut  in,  "and 
that  is  no  fault  in  you.  But  what  you 
really  mean  is  that  you  don't  like  us, 
and  that,  I  submit,  is  your  own  fault." 

"But  let  me  explain,"  urged  he. 

"Go  ahead,"  said  Hilda. 

"Well,  what  I  mean  is  this,"  he  ex- 
plained. "Here  I  find  you  three  women 
out  at  the  very  edge  of  the  battle-front. 


THE   RIBBONS  IN  HIS   COAT    43 

Here  you  are  in  a  cellar,  sleeping  in 
bags  on  the  straw,  living  on  bully-beef 
and  canned  stuff.  Now,  you  could  just 
as  well  be  twenty  miles  back,  nursing  in 
a  hospital." 

"Is  there  any  shortage  of  nurses  for 
the  hospitals?"  interposed  Hilda.  "When 
I  went  to  the  Red  Cross  at  Pall  Mall  in 
London,  they  had  over  three  thousand 
nurses  on  the  waiting  list." 

"That's  true  enough,"  assented  Bark- 
leigh.  "But  what  I  mean  is,  this  is 
reckless;  you  are  in  danger,  without 
really  knowing  it." 

"So  are  the  men  in  danger,"  returned 
Hilda.  "The  soldiers  come  in  here,  hun- 
gry, and  we  have  hot  soup  for  them. 
They  come  from  the  trenches,  with  a 
gunshot  wound  in  the  hand,  or  a  piece 
of  shell  in  a  leg,  and  we  fix  them  up. 
That's  better  than  travelling  seven  or 
eight  miles  before  getting  attention. 
Why  it  was  only  a  week  ago  that  Mrs. 
Bracher  here  —  " 


44    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"Now  none  of  that,"  broke  in  the 
nurse  sternly. 

"Hush,"  said  Hilda,  "it  isn't  polite 
to  interrupt  when  a  gentleman  is  asking 
for  information." 

She  turned  back  to  the  correspon- 
dent. 

"Last  week,"  she  took  up  her  story, 
"a  young  Belgian  private  came  in  here 
with  his  lower  lip  swollen  out  to  twice 
its  proper  size.  It  had  got  gangrene 
in  it.  A  silly  old  military  doctor  had 
clapped  a  treatment  over  it,  when  the 
wound  was  fresh  and  dirty,  without  first 
cleaning  it  out.  Mrs.  Bracher  treated  it 
every  two  hours  for  six  days.  The  boy 
used  to  come  right  in  here  from  the 
trenches.  And  would  you  believe  it, 
that  lip  is  looking  almost  right.  If  it 
hadn't  been  for  her,  he  would  have  been 
disfigured  for  life." 

"Very  good,"  admitted  the  correspon- 
dent, "but  it  doesn't  quite  satisfy  me. 
Wait  till  you  get  some  real  hot  shell 


THE   RIBBONS   IN   HIS   COAT    45 

fire  out  here,  then  you'll  make  for  your 
happy  home." 

"Why,"  began  Scotch,  rising  slowly 
but  powerfully  to  utterance. 

"It's  all  right,  Scotch,"  interposed 
Hilda,  at  a  gallop,  "save  the  surprise. 
It  will  keep." 

Scotch  subsided  into  a  rich  silence. 
She  somehow  never  quite  got  into  the  con- 
versation, though  she  was  always  in  the 
action.  She  was  one  of  those  silent,  com- 
fortable persons,  without  whom  no  group 
is  complete.  Into  her  ample  placidity 
fell  the  high-pitched  clamor  of  noisier 
people,  like  pebbles  into  a  mountain 
lake. 

"Now,  what  do  you  women  think 
you  are  doing?"  persisted  the  corre- 
spondent. "Why  are  you  here?" 

'You  really  want  to  know?"  queried 
Hilda. 

"I  really  want  to  know,"  he  repeated. 

"I'll  answer  you  to-morrow,"  said 
Hilda.  "Come  out  here  to-morrow  after- 


46    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

noon  and  we'll  go  to  Nieuport.  We 
promised  to  go  over  and  visit  the  dress- 
ing-station there,  and  on  the  way  I'll 
tell  you  why  we  are  here." 

Next  day  was  grey  and  chilly.  A  low 
rumble  came  out  of  the  north.  The 
women  had  a  busy  morning,  for  the 
night  had  been  full  of  snipers  perched  on 
trees.  The  faithful  three  spread  aseptics 
and  bandaged  and  sewed,  and  generally 
cheered  the  stream  of  callers  from  the 
Ninth  and  Twelfth  Regiments,  Army 
of  the  King  of  the  Belgians.  In  the 
early  afternoon,  the  buzz  of  motors  pene- 
trated to  the  stuffy  cellar,  and  it  needed 
no  yelping  horn,  squeezed  by  the  firm 
hand  of  Smith,  to  bring  Hilda  to  the 
surface,  alert  for  the  expedition.  Two 
motor  ambulances  were  puffing  their 
lungs  out,  in  the  roadway.  Pale-faced 
Smith  sat  in  one  at  the  steering-gear  — 
Smith,  the  slight  London  boy  who  would 
drive  a  car  anywhere.  Beside  him  sat 


THE   RIBBONS   IN  HIS   COAT    47 

F.  Ainslie-Barkleigh,  bent  over  upon  his 
war  map,  studying  the  afternoon's  cam- 
paign. In  the  second  ambulance  were 
Tom,  the  Cockney  driver,  and  the  leader 
of  the  Ambulance  Corps,  Dr.  Neil  Mc- 
Donnell. 

"Jump  in,"  called  he,  "we're  off  for 
Nieuport." 

She  jumped  into  the  first  ambulance, 
and  they  turned  to  the  north  and  took 
the  straight  road  that  leads  all  the  way 
from  Dixmude  to  the  sea.  Barkleigh 
was  much  too  busy  with  his  glasses 
and  his  map  to  give  her  any  of  his  atten- 
tion for  the  first  quarter  hour.  They 
speeded  by  sentinel  after  sentinel,  who 
smiled  and  murmured,  "Les  Anglais." 
Corporals,  captains,  commandants,  gazed 
in  amazement  and  awe  at  the  mas- 
sive figure  of  the  war -correspondent, 
as  he  challenged  the  horizon  with  his 
binoculars  and  then  dipped  to  his  map 
for  consultation.  Only  once  did  the 
party  have  to  yield  up  the  pass-word, 


48    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

which  for  that  afternoon  was  "Charleroi." 
Finally  Barkleigh  turned  to  the  girl. 

"We  had  a  discussion  last  evening," 
he  began,  "and  you  promised  to  answer 
my  question.  Why  are  you  out  here? 
Why  isn't  a  hospital  good  enough  for 
you,  back  in  Fumes  or  Dunkirk?" 

"I  remember,"  returned  Hilda.  "I'll 
tell  you.  I  could  answer  you  by  saying 
that  we're  out  to  help,  and  that  would 
be  true,  too.  But  it  wouldn't  be  quite 
the  whole  truth,  for  there's  a  tang  of 
adventure  in  Pervyse,  where  we  can  see 
the  outposts  of  the  other  fellows,  that 
there  isn't  in  the  Carnegie  Library  in 
Pittsburg,  let  us  say.  Yes,  we're  out  to 
help.  But  we're  out  for  another  reason, 
too.  For  generations  now,  you  men 
have  had  a  monopoly  of  physical  courage. 
You  have  faced  storms  at  sea,  and 
charged  up  hills,  and  pulled  out  drowning 
children,  and  footed  it  up  fire-ladders, 
till  you  think  that  bravery  is  a  male 
characteristic.  You've  always  handed 


THE   RIBBONS   IN   HIS   COAT    49 

out  the  passive  suffering  act  to  us.  We 
had  any  amount  of  compliments  as  long 
as  we  stuck  to  silent  suffering.  But  now 
we  want  to  see  what  shells  look  like. 
As  long  as  sons  and  brothers  have  to 
stand  up  to  them,  why,  we're  going  to 
be  there,  too." 

"But   you    haven't  been  in  the  thick 

of     it,"     objected     Barkleigh.       When 

the    danger    is   so  close  you  can  see  it, 

a  woman's  nerve  isn't  as  good  as  a  man's. 

It  can't  be.     She  isn't  built  that  way." 

"That's  the  very  point,"  retorted 
Hilda,  "we're  going  to  show  you." 

"Damn  quick,"  muttered  Smith. 

In  the  pleasant  heat  of  their  discussion, 
they  hadn't  been  noticing  the  roadway. 
It  was  full  of  soldiers,  trudging  south. 
The  rumble  had  become  a  series  of 
reports.  The  look  of  the  peaceful  day 
was  changing.  Barkleigh  turned  from 
his  concentration  on  the  girl,  and  glanced 
up  the  road. 

"These  troops  are  all  turning,"  he  said. 


50    YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

"You  are  right,"  Hilda  admitted. 

"Can't  you  see,"  he  urged,  "they're 
all  marching  back.  That  means  they've 
given  the  place  up." 

"Oh,  hardly  that,"  corrected  Hilda; 
"it  simply  means  that  Nieuport  is  hot 
for  the  present  moment." 

"  You're  not  going  in?"  continued 
Barkleigh.  "It  is  foolish  to  go  into  the 
town,  when  the  troops  are  coming  out 
of  it." 

"True  enough,"  assented  Hilda,  "but 
it's  a  curious  fact  that  the  wounded  can't 
retreat  as  fast  as  the  other  men,  so  I'm 
afraid  we  shall  have  to  look  them  up. 
Of  course,  it  would  be  a  lot  pleasanter 
if  they  could  come  to  meet  us  half-way." 

Smith  let  out  his  motor,  and  turned  up 
his  coat  collar,  a  habit  of  his  when  he 
anticipated  a  breezy  time.  They 
pounded  down  the  road,  and  into  the 
choice  old  town. 

They  had  chanced  on  the  afternoon 
when  the  enemy's  guns  were  reducing  it 


THE   RIBBONS   IN   HIS   COAT    51 

from  an  inhabited  place  into  a  rubbish 
heap.  They  could  not  well  have  chosen 
a  brisker  hour  for  the  promised  visit. 
The  shells  were  coming  in  three  and  four 
to  the  minute.  There  was  a  sound  of 
falling  masonry.  The  blur  of  red  brick- 
dust  in  the  air,  and  the  fires  from  a  hah* 
dozen  blazing  houses,  filled  the  eyes 
with  hot  prickles.  The  street  was  a 
mess  over  which  the  motor  veered  and 
tossed  like  a  careening  boat  in  a  heavy 
seawash.  In  the  other  car,  their  leader, 
brave,  perky  little  Dr.  McDonnell,  sat 
with  his  blue  eyes  dreaming  away  at  the 
ruin  in  front  of  him.  The  man  was  a 
mystic  and  burrowed  down  into  his 
sub-consciousness  when  under  fire.  This 
made  him  calm,  slow,  and  very  absent- 
minded,  during  the  moments  when  he 
passed  in  under  the  guns. 

They  steamed  up  to  the  big  yellow 
Hotel  de  Ville.  This  was  the  target  of 
the  concentrated  artillery  fire,  for  here 
troops  had  been  sheltering.  Here,  too, 


52    YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

in  the  cellar,  was  the  dressing-station  for 
the  wounded.  A  small,  spent,  but  accu- 
rately directed  obus,  came  in  a  parabola 
from  over  behind  the  roofs,  and  floated 
by  the  ambulance  and  thudded  against 
the  yellow  brick  of  the  stately  hall. 

"Ah,  it's  got  whiskers  on  it,"  shouted 
Hilda  in  glee.  "I  didn't  know  they  got 
tired  like  that,  and  came  so  slow  you 
could  see  them,  did  you,  Mr.  Barkleigh?" 

"No,  no,  of  course  not,"  he  muttered, 
"they  don't.  What's  that?" 

The  clear,  cold  tinkle  of  breaking  and 
spilling  glass  had  seized  his  attention. 
The  sound  came  out  from  the  Hotel  de 
Ville. 

"The  window  had  a  pane,"  said  Hilda. 

"The  town  is  doomed,"  said  Barkleigh. 

"Can't  we  get  out  of  this?"  he  in- 
sisted. "This  is  no  place  to  be." 

"No  place  for  a  woman,  is  it?"  laughed 
Hilda. 

"Don't  let  me  keep  you,"  she  added 
politely,  "if  you  feel  you  must  go." 


THE   RIBBONS   IN   HIS   COAT    53 

"Listen,"  said  the  war-correspondent. 
About  a  stone's  throw  to  their  left,  a 
wall  was  crumpling  up. 

Dr.  McDonnell  had  slowly  crawled 
down  from  his  perch  on  the  ambulance. 
His  legs  were  stiff  from  the  long  ride,  so 
he  carefully  shook  them  one  after  the 
other,  and  spoke  pleasantly  to  a  dog 
that  was  wandering  about  the  Grand 
Place  in  a  forlorn  panic.  Then  he  re- 
membered why  he  had  come  to  the 
place.  There  were  wounded  downstairs 
in  the  Town-hall. 

"Come  on,  boys,"  he  said  to  Tom  and 
Smith,  "bring  one  stretcher,  and  we'll 
clear  the  place  out.  Hilda,  you  stay  by 
the  cars.  We  shan't  be  but  a  minute." 

They  disappeared  inside  the  battered 
building.  Barkleigh  walked  up  and  down 
the  Grand  Place,  felt  of  the  machinery 
of  each  of  the  two  ambulances,  lit  a 
cigarette,  threw  it  away  and  chewed  at 
an  unlighted  cigar. 

"It's  hot,"  he  said;  "this  is  hot." 


54    YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

"And  yet  you  are  shaking  as  if  you 
were  chilly,"  observed  Hilda. 

"We  should  never  have  come,"  went  on 
Barkleigh.  "I  said  so,  away  back  there 
on  the  road.  You  remember  I  said  so." 

"Yes,  the  first  experience  under  fire 
is  trying,"  assented  Hilda.  "I  think  the 
shells  are  the  most  annoying,  don't 
you,  Mr.  Barkleigh?  Now  shrapnel 
seems  more  friendly  —  quite  like  a  hail- 
storm in  Iowa.  I  come  from  Iowa,  you 
know.  I  don't  believe  you  do  know  that 
I  come  from  Iowa." 

"They're  slow,"  said  Barkleigh,  look- 
ing toward  the  Town-hall.  "Why  can't 
they  hurry  them  out?" 

'You  see,"  explained  Hilda,  "there 
are  only  three  of  them  actively  at  work, 
and  it's  quite  a  handful  for  them." 

In  a  few  moments  Smith  and  Tom 
appeared,  carrying  a  man  with  a  band- 
aged leg  on  their  stretcher.  Dr.  McDon- 
nell was  leading  two  others,  who  were 
able  to  walk  with  a  little  direction.  One 


THE   RIBBONS  IN   HIS   COAT    55 

more  trip  in  and  out  and  the  ambulances 
were  loaded. 

"Back  to  Pervyse,"  ordered  Dr.  Mc- 
Donnell. 

At  Pervyse,  Scotch  and  Mrs.  Bracher 
were  ready  for  them.  So  was  an  English 
Tommy,  who  singled  out  Ainslie-Barkleigh. 

"Orders  from  Kitchener,  sir,"  said  the 
orderly.  'You  must  return  to  Dunkirk 
at  once.  No  correspondent  is  allowed 
at  the  front." 

Barkleigh  listened  attentively,  and 
assented  with  a  nod  of  his  head.  He 
walked  up  to  the  three  ladies. 

"Very  sorry,"  explained  he.  "I  had 
hoped  to  stay  with  you,  and  go  out  again. 
Very  interesting  and  all  that.  But  K.  is 
strict,  you  know,  so  I  must  leave  you." 

He  bowed  himself  away. 

"Oh,  welcome  intervention,"  breathed 
Mrs.  Bracher. 

A  few  weeks  had  passed  with  their 
angry  weather,  and  now  all  was  green 


56    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

again  and  sunny.  Seldom  had  the  cen- 
tral square  of  Poperinghe  looked  gayer 
than  on  this  afternoon,  when  soldiers 
were  lined  up  in  the  middle,  and  on  all 
the  sides  the  people  were  standing  by 
the  tens  and  hundreds.  High  overhead 
from  every  window  and  on  every  pole, 
flags  were  streaming  in  the  spring  wind. 
Why  shouldn't  the  populace  rejoice,  for 
had  not  this  town  of  theirs  held  out 
through  all  the  cruel  winter:  refuge  and 
rest  for  their  weary  troops,  and  citadel 
of  their  King?  And  was  not  that  their 
King,  standing  over  yonder  on  the  pave- 
ment, higher  than  the  generals  and 
statesmen  on  the  steps  of  the  Town-hall 
back  of  him?  Tall  and  slender,  crowned 
with  youth  and  beauty,  did  he  not  hold 
in  his  hand  the  hearts  of  all  his  people? 
And  to-day  he  was  passing  on  merit  to 
two  English  dames,  and  the  people  were 
glad  of  this,  for  the  two  English  dames 
had  been  kind  to  their  soldiers  in  sick- 
ness, and  had  undergone  no  little  peril 


THE   RIBBONS  IN  HIS   COAT    57 

to  carry  them  comfort  and  healing.  Yes, 
they  were  glad  to  shout  and  clap  hands, 
when,  as  Chevaliers  of  the  Order  of 
Leopold,  the  ribbon  and  star  pendant 
were  pinned  on  the  breast  of  the  sturdy 
Mrs.  Bracher,  and  the  silent,  charming 
Scotch.  The  band  bashed  the  cymbals 
and  beat  the  drum,  and  the  wind  in- 
struments roared  approval.  And  the 
modest  young  King  saluted  the  two 
brave  ladies. 

In  a  shop  door,  a  couple  of  hundred 
yards  from  the  ceremony,  Hilda  was 
standing  quietly  watching  the  joyous 
crowds  and  their  King.  Pushing  through 
the  throng  that  hemmed  her  in,  a  massive 
man  came  and  stood  by  her. 

"Ah,  Mr.  Barkleigh,"  said  Hilda,  "this 
is  a  surprise." 

"It's  a  shame,"  he  began. 

"What's  a  shame?"  asked  Hilda. 

"Why  aren't  they  decorating  you? 
You're  the  bravest  of  the  lot." 

"By    no    means,"   said    Hilda;    "those 


58    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

two  women  deserve  all  that  is  coming 
to  them.  I  am  glad  they  are  getting 
their  pretty  ribbon." 

With  a  sudden  nervous  gesture,  Bark- 
leigh  unfastened  the  bright  decorations 
on  his  chest,  and  placed  them  in  Hilda's 
hand. 

"Take  them  and  wear  them,"  he  said, 
"I  have  no  heart  for  them  any  more. 
They  are  yours." 

"I  didn't  win  them,  so  I  can't  wear 
them,"  she  answered,  and  started  to 
hand  them  back. 

"No,  I  won't  take  them  back,"  he 
said  harshly,  brushing  her  hand  from  him, 
"if  you  won't  wear  them,  keep  them. 
Hide  them,  throw  them  away.  I'm  done 
with  them.  I  can't  wear  them  any 
more  since  that  afternoon  in  Nieuport." 

Hilda  pinned  the  ribbons  upon  his  coat. 

"I  decorate  you,"  she  said,  "for,  verily, 
you  are  now  worthy." 


THE  BELGIAN  REFUGEE 

By  acts  not  his  own,  his  consciousness 
is  crowded  with  horror.  Names  of  his 
ancient  cities  which  should  ring  pleasantly 
in  his  ear  —  Louvain,  Dinant,  M alines : 
there  is  an  echo  of  the  sound  of  bells  in 
the  very  names  —  recall  him  to  his  suffer- 
ing. No  indemnity  will  cleanse  his  mind 
of  the  vileness  committed  on  what  he  loved. 
By  every  aspect  of  a  once-prized  beauty, 
the  face  of  his  torment  is  made  more  clear. 
Of  all  that  fills  the  life  of  memory  —  the 
secure  home,  the  fruitful  village  and  the 
well-loved  land  —  there  is  no  acre  remain- 
ing where  his  thought  can  rest.  Each  re- 
membered place  brings  a  sharper  stroke  of 
poignancy  to  the  mind  that  is  dispossessed. 

His  is  a  mental  life  uprooted  and  flung 
out  into  a  vast  loneliness.  Where  can  his 
thought  turn  when  it  would  heal  itself? 
To  the  disconsolate  there  has  always  been 


60    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

comfort  in  recalling  the  early  home  where 
childhood  was  nourished,  the  orchard  and 
the  meadow  where  first  love  came  to  the 
meeting,  the  eager  city  where  ambition, 
full-panoplied,  sprang  from  the  brain. 
The  mind  is  hung  with  pictures  of  what 
once  was.  But  there  must  always  be  a 
local  habitation  for  these  rekindled  heats. 
Somewhere,  in  scene  and  setting,  the  boy 
played,  the  youth  loved,  the  man  struggled. 
That  richness  of  feeling  is  interwoven  with 
a  place.  No  passion  or  gladness  comes 
out  of  the  buried  years  without  some  bit 
of  the  soil  clinging  to  it. 

Now,  in  a  passing  autumn,  for  a  nation 
of  people,  all  places  are  alike  to  them 
bitter  in  the  recollection.  The  Belgian, 
disinherited,  can  never  summon  a  presence 
out  of  the  past  which  will  not,  in  its  com- 
ing, bring  burning  and  slaughter.  All 
that  was  fair  in  his  consciousness  has  been 
seared  with  horror.  Where  can  he  go  to 
be  at  home?  To  England?  To  a  new 
continent?  What  stranger-city  will  give 


THE    BELGIAN    REFUGEE      61 

him  back  his  memories?  He  is  condemned 
forever  to  live  in  the  moment,  never  to  let 
his  mind  stray  over  the  past.  For,  in 
the  pastt  in  gracious  prospect,  lie  village 
and  city  of  Flanders,  and  the  name  of  the 
ravaged  place  will  suddenly  release  a  cloud 
of  darkness  with  voices  of  pain. 


Ill 

ROLLO,  THE  APOLLO 

RS.  BRACHER  was  just  starting 
on  one  of  her  excursions  from 
Pervyse  into  Furnes.  Her  tiny 
first-aid  hospital,  hidden  in  the  battered 
house,  needed  food,  clothing,  and  dress- 
ings for  the  wounded.  One  morning 
when  the  three  nurses  were  up  in  the 
trenches,  a  shell  had  dug  down  into  their 
cellar  and  spilled  ruin.  Now,  it  is  not 
well  to  live  in  a  place  which  a  gun  has 
located,  because  modern  artillery  is  fine 
in  its  workings  to  a  hair's-breadth,  and 
can  repeat  its  performance  to  a  fractional 
inch.  So  the  little  houshold  had  re- 
moved themselves  from  the  famous  cellar 
to  a  half-shattered  house,  which  had  one 
whole  living-room  on  the  ground  floor, 
good  for  wounded  and  for  the  serving 
of  meals;  and  one  unbroken  bedroom 


64    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

on  the  first  floor,  large  enough  for  three 
tired  women. 

"Any  errands,  girls?"  she  called  to 
her  two  assistants  as  she  mounted  to  her 
seat  on  the  motor  ambulance. 

"Bring  me  a  man,"  begged  Hilda. 
"Bring  back  some  one  to  stir  things  up." 

Indeed,  it  had  been  slow  for  the 
nurses  during  the  last  fortnight.  They 
were  "at  the  front,"  but  the  front  was 
peaceful.  After  the  hot  toil  of  the 
autumn  attack  and  counter-attack,  there 
had  come  a  deadlock  to  the  wearied 
troops.  They  were  eaten  up  with  the 
chill  of  the  moist  earth,  and  the  per- 
petual drizzle.  So  they  laid  by  their 
machine  guns,  and  silently  wore  through 
the  grey  days. 

Victor,  the  orderly,  cranked  the  engine 
for  Mrs.  Bracher,  and  she  hummed 
merrily  away.  She  drove  the  car.  She 
was  not  going  to  have  any  fumbling 
male  hand  spoil  that  sweetly  running 
motor.  She  had  chosen  the  battle-front 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  65 

in  Flanders  as  the  perfect  place  for 
vindicating  woman's  courage,  coolness, 
and  capacity  for  roughing  it.  She  was 
determined  to  leave  not  one  quality  of 
initiative  and  daring  to  man's  monopoly. 
If  he  had  worn  a  decoration  for  some 
"nervy"  hazardous  trait,  she  came  pre- 
pared to  pluck  it  from  his  swelling  pride, 
cut  it  in  two  pieces  and  wear  her  half 
of  it. 

Her  only  delay  was  a  mile  in  from 
Pervyse.  The  engine  choked,  and  the 
car  grunted  to  a  standstill.  She  was  in 
front  of  a  deserted  farm-house.  She  had 
a  half  hope  that  there  might  be  soldiers 
billeted  there.  In  that  case,  she  could 
ask  one  of  them  to  step  out  and  start 
up  the  engine  for  her.  Cranking  a 
motor  is  severe  on  even  a  sturdy  woman. 
She  climbed  out  over  the  dashboard 
from  the  wheel  side,  and  entered  the 
door-yard.  The  barn  had  been  demol- 
ished by  shells.  The  ground  around  the 
house  was  pitted  with  shell-holes,  a  foot 


66    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

deep,  three  feet  deep,  one  hole  six  feet 
deep.  The  chimney  of  the  house  had 
collapsed  from  a  well-aimed  obus.  Mrs. 
Bracher  knocked  at  the  door,  and  shook 
it.  But  there  was  no  answer.  The 
house  carried  that  silent  horror  of  a  de- 
serted and  dangerous  place.  It  seemed 
good  to  her  to  come  away  from  it,  and 
return  to  the  motor.  She  bent  her  back 
to  the  crank,  and  set  the  engine  chug- 
ging. It  was  good  to  travel  along  to 
the  sight  of  a  human  face. 

"No  one  stationed  there?"  she  asked 
of  the  next  sentinel. 

"It  is  impossible,  Madame,"  he  replied; 
"the  enemy  have  located  it  exactly  with 
a  couple  of  their  guns.  Not  one  day 
passes  but  they  throw  their  shells 
around  it." 

As  Mrs.  Bracher  completed  the  seven- 
mile  run,  and  tore  into  the  Grand  Place 
of  Furnes,  she  was  greeted  by  cheers 
from  the  populace.  And,  indeed,  she 
was  a  striking  figure  in  her  yellow 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  67 

leather  jerkin,  her  knee-breeches  and 
puttees,  and  her  shining  yellow  "doggy" 
boots.  She  carried  all  the  air  of  an 
officer  planning  a  desperate  coup.  As 
she  cut  her  famous  half-moon  curve 
from  the  north-east  corner  of  the  Place 
by  the  Gendarmerie  over  to  the  Hotel 
at  the  south-west,  she  saluted  General 
de  Wette  standing  on  the  steps  of  the 
Municipal  Building.  He,  of  course,  knew 
her.  Who  of  the  Belgian  army  did  not 
know  those  three  unquenchable  women 
living  up  by  the  trenches  on  the  Yser? 
He  gravely  saluted  the  streak  of  yellow 
as  it  flashed  by.  Just  when  she  was 
due  to  bend  the  curb  or  telescope  her 
front  wheel,  she  threw  in  the  clutch, 
and,  with  a  shriek  of  metal  and  a  shiver 
of  parts,  the  car  came  to  a  stop.  She 
jumped  out  from  it  and  strode  away  from 
it,  as  if  it  were  a  cast-off  ware  which  she 
was  never  to  see  again.  She  entered 
the  restaurant.  At  three  of  the  tables 
sat  officers  of  the  Belgian  regiments  — 


68    YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS 

lieutenants,  two  commandants,  one  cap- 
tain. At  the  fourth  table,  in  the  window, 
was  dear  little  Doctor  Neil  McDonnell, 
beaming  at  the  velocity  and  sensation 
of  her  advent. 

"You  come  like  a  yellow  peril,"  said 
he.  "If  you  are  not  careful,  you  will 
make  more  wounded  than  you  heal." 

"Never,"  returned  Mrs.  Bracher, 
firmly;  "it  is  always  in  control." 

The  Doctor,  who  was  a  considerate 
as  well  as  a  brave  leader,  well  knew  how 
restricted  was  the  diet  under  which 
those  loyal  women  lived  in  the  chilly 
house,  caring  for  "les  blesses"  among  the 
entrenched  soldiers.  So  he  extended  him- 
self in  ordering  an  ample  and  various 
meal,  which  would  enable  Mrs.  Bracher 
to  return  to  her  bombarded  dug-out 
with  renewed  vigor. 

"What's  the  news?"  she  asked,  after 
she  had  broken  the  back  of  her  hunger. 

"We  are  expecting  a  new  member 
for  our  corps,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "a 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  69 

young  cyclist  of  the  Belgian  army.  He 
fought  bravely  at  Liege  and  Namur,  and 
later  at  Alost.  But  since  Antwerp,  his 
division  has  been  disbanded,  and  he 
has  been  wandering  about.  We  met  him 
at  Dunkirk.  We  saw  at  once  how  valu- 
able he  would  be  to  us,  with  his  knowl- 
edge of  French  and  Flemish,  and  his 
bravery." 

"Which  ambulance  will  he  go  out 
with?"  asked  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"He  will  have  a  touring-car  of  his 
own,"  replied  Dr.  McDonnell. 

"I  thought  you  said  he  was  a  cyclist," 
objected  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"I  gave  him  an  order  on  Calais," 
explained  the  Doctor.  "He  went  down 
there  and  selected  a  speed-car.  I'm 
expecting  him  any  minute,"  he  added. 

The  short  afternoon  had  waned  away 
into  brief  twilight,  and  then,  with  a 
suddenness,  into  the  blackness  of  the 
winter  night.  As  they  two  faced  out 
into  the  Grand  Place,  there  was  depth  on 


70    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

depth  of  black  space,  from  which  came 
the  throb  of  a  motor,  the  whistle  of  a 
soldier,  the  clatter  of  hooves  on  cobbles. 
Only  out  from  their  window  there  fell 
a  short-reaching  radiance  that  spread 
over  the  sidewalk  and  conquered  a  few 
feet  of  the  darkness  beyond. 

Into  this  thin  patch  of  brightness, 
there  rode  a  grey  car,  two-seated,  long, 
slim,  pointed  for  speed.  The  same  rays 
of  the  window  lamp  sufficed  to  light  up 
the  features  of  the  sole  occupant  of  the 
car:  —  high  cheek-bones,  thin  cheeks,  and 
pale  face,  tall  form. 

"There  he  is,"  said  Dr.  McDonnell, 
enthusiastically;  "there's  our  new 
member." 

With  a  stride  of  power,  the  green-clad 
warrior  entered  the  cafe,  and  saluted 
Dr.  McDonnell. 

"Ready  for  work,"  he  said. 

"I  see  you  are,"  answered  Dr.  McDon- 
nell. :<Will  you  sit  down  and  join  us?" 

"Gladly — in  a  moment.     But  I  must 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  71 

first    go    across    the    square    and    see    a 
Gendarme." 

"Your  car  is  built  for  speed,"  put  in 
Mrs.  Bracher. 

"One  hundred  and  twenty  kilometres, 
the  hour,"  answered  the  new-comer. 
"Let  me  see,  in  your  language  that  will 
be  seventy  miles  an  hour.  Swift,  is  it 
not?" 

"Why  the  double  tires?"  she  asked. 
'You  have  a  quick  eye,"  he  answered. 
"I  like  always  the  extra  tires,  you  never 
know  in  war  where  the  break-down  will 
come.     It  is  well  to  be  ready." 

He  flashed  a  smile  at  her,  saluted  the 
Doctor  and  left  the  cafe. 

"What  a  man!"  exclaimed  Dr. 
McDonnell. 

''That's  what  I  say,"  agreed  Mrs. 
Bracher.  "What  a  man!" 

"Look  at  him,"  continued  the  Doctor. 

"I  did,  hard,"  answered  Mrs.  Bracher. 

Mrs.  Bracher,  Hilda,  and  Scotch,  were 


72    YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS 

the  extreme  advance  guard  of  Doctor 
McDonnell's  Motor  Ambulance  Corps. 
The  rest  of  the  Corps  lived  in  the  Con- 
vent hospital  in  Fumes.  It  was  here  that 
the  newcomer  and  his  speed-car  were 
made  welcome.  He  was  a  success  from 
the  moment  of  his  arrival.  He  was 
easily  the  leading  member  of  the  Corps. 
He  had  a  careless  way  with  him.  Being 
tall  and  handsome,  he  could  be  indif- 
ferent and  yet  hold  the  interest.  To 
women  that  arrogance  even  added  to  his 
interest.  His  costume  was  very  splendid 
—  a  dark  green  cloth  which  set  off  his 
straight  form;  the  leather  jacket,  which 
made  him  look  like  some  craftsman;  the 
jaunty  cap,  which  emphasized  the  high 
cheek-bones  in  the  lean  face.  Both  his 
face  and  his  figure  being  spare,  he  prom- 
ised energy.  He  had  the  knack  of  mak- 
ing a  sensation  whenever  he  appeared. 
Only  a  few  among  mortals  are  gifted 
that  way.  Most  of  us  have  to  get  our 
own  slippers  and  light  our  own  cigars. 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  73 

But  he  was  able  to  convey  the  idea  that 
it  was  a  privilege  to  serve  him.  The 
busy  superintendent  of  the  hospital,  a 
charming  Italian  woman,  cooked  special 
meals  for  him,  and  served  them  in  his 
room,  so  that  he  would  not  be  contami- 
nated by  contact  with  the  Ambulance 
Corps,  a  noisy,  breezy  group.  A  boy 
scout  pulled  his  boots  off  and  on  for  him, 
oiled  his  machine,  and  cranked  his  motor. 
The  lean  cheeks  filled  out,  the  restless, 
audacious,  roving  eyes  tamed  down.  A 
sleekness  settled  over  his  whole  person. 
It  was  like  discovering  a  hungry,  prowl- 
ing night  cat,  homeless  and  winning  its 
meat  by  combat,  and  bringing  that  cat 
to  the  fireside  and  supplying  it  with 
copious  cream,  and  watching  it  fill  out 
and  stretch  itself  in  comfort. 

There  was  a  song  just  then  that  had  a 
lilting  chorus.  It  told  of  'Rollo,  the 
Apollo,  the  King  of  the  Swells.'  So  the 
Corps  named  their  new  member  Rollo. 
How  wonderful  he  was  with  his  pride  of 


74    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

bearing,  and  the  insolent  way  of  him. 
He  moved  like  an  Olympian  through 
the  herd  of  shabby  little  scrambling  folk. 

"Is  it  ever  hot  out  your  way?"  queried 
Rollo  during  one  of  Mrs.  Bracher's  flying 
visits  to  Fumes. 

"I  could  hardly  call  it  hot,"  replied 
the  nurse.  "The  walls  of  our  house, 
that  is,  the  fragments  of  them  left  stand- 
ing, are  full  of  shrapnel.  The  road 
outside  our  door  is  dented  with  shell 
holes.  Every  house  in  the  village  is 
shot  full  of  metal.  There's  a  battery 
of  seven  Belgian  guns  spitting  away  in 
our  back-yard.  But  we  don't  call  it 
hot,  because  we  hate  to  exaggerate." 

"I'll  have  to  come  out  and  see  you," 
he  said,  with  a  smile. 

He  became  a  frequent  visitor  at 
Pervyse. 

"Rollo  is  wonderful,"  exclaimed  Hilda. 

"How  wonderful?"  asked  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"Only  to-day,"  explained  Hilda,  "he 
showed  me  his  field-glasses,  which  he 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  75 

had  taken  from  the  body  of  a  German 
officer  whom  he  killed  at  Alost." 

"That's  true,"  corroborated  Scotch, 
"and  once  in  his  room  at  the  hospital 
he  showed  me  a  sable  helmet.  Scarlet 
cloth  and  gold  braid,  and  the  hussar  fur 
all  over  it.  It's  a  beauty.  I  wish  he'd 
give  it  to  me." 

"How  did  he  get  it?"  asked  Mrs. 
Bracher. 

"He  shot  an  officer  in  the  skirmish 
at  Zele." 

"He  must  have  been  a  busy  man  with 
his  rifle,"  commented  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"He  was.  He  was,"  said  Hilda.  "Why, 
he's  shot  fifty-one  men,  since  the  war 
began." 

"Does  he  keep  notches  on  his  rifle?" 
queried  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"I  think  it's  a  privilege  to  have  a 
man  as  brave  as  he  is  going  out  with 
us,"  replied  Hilda.  "We  must  bore  him 
frightfully." 

"He's  peaceful  enough  now,  isn't  he," 


76    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

observed  Mrs.  Bracher,  "trotting  around 
with  a  Red  Cross  Ambulance  Corps.  I 
should  think  he'd  miss  the  old  days." 

Hilda  and  Mrs.  Bracher  were  having 
an  early  morning  stroll. 

"It's  a  little  too  hot  up  by  the 
trenches,"  said  the  nurse;  "we'll  take  the 
Fumes  road." 

"It  was  a  wet  night,  last  night," 
commented  she,  after  they  had  trudged 
along  for  a  few  minutes. 

"Are  you  going  to  walk  me  to  Furnes?" 
asked  Hilda. 

"You're  losing  your  prairie  zip,"  re- 
torted Mrs.  Bracher.  "You  ought  to  be 
glad  of  the  air,  after  that  smelly  straw." 

"The  air  is  better  than  the  mud," 
returned  Hilda,  holding  up  a  boot,  which 
had  gathered  part  of  the  roadway  to 
itself. 

"We'll  be  there  in  a  minute,"  said 
the  nurse. 

"Where's  there?"  asked  Hilda. 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO          77 

"Right  here,"  answered  Mrs.  Bracher. 

They  had  come  to  the  deserted  farm- 
house where  she  had  once  met  with  her 
delay  and  where  she  had  knocked  in 
vain. 

"See  here,"  she  exclaimed. 

"Wheel  marks,"  said  Hilda. 

"Motor-car  tracks,"  corrected  Mrs. 
Bracher. 

The  soggy  turf  that  led  from  the  road 
into  the  door-yard  of  the  farm-house  was 
deeply  and  freshly  indented. 

"Perhaps  some  one's  here  now,"  sug- 
gested Hilda. 

"Never  fear,"  answered  the  nurse. 
"It's  night  work. 

"Up  to  two  weeks  ago,"  she  went  on, 
"this  farm  was  shot  at,  every  day,  from 
over  the  Yser.  Since  then,  it  hasn't 
been  shelled  at  all." 

"What  of  it?"  asked  Hilda. 

"We'll  see,"  said  Mrs.  Bracher.  "It 
always  pays  to  get  up  early,  doesn't 
it,  my  dear?" 


78    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"I  don't  know,"  returned  the  girl, 
dubiously.  She  was  footsore  with  Mrs. 
Bracher's  speed. 

"Well,  that's  enough  for  one  morn- 
ing," concluded  the  nurse,  with  one  last 
look  about  the  farm. 

"I  should  think  it  was,"  agreed  Hilda. 

They  returned  to  their  dressing-station. 

It  was  early  evening,  and  the  nurses 
had  finished  their  frugal  supper.  With 
the  dishes  cleared  away,  they  were 
sitting  for  a  cosy  chat  about  the  table. 
Overhead  hung  a  lamp,  with  a  base  so 
broad  that  it  cast  a  heavy  shadow  on 
the  table  under  it.  There  was  a  fire  of 
coals  in  the  little  corner  stove,  and 
through  the  open  door  of  the  stove  a 
friendly  glow  spread  out  into  the  room. 
As  they  sat  there  resting  and  talking,  a 
tap-tap  came  at  the  window. 

"Ah,  the  Commandant  is  back,"  said 
Hilda.  The  women  brightened  up.  The 
door  opened  and  their  good  friend, 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO          79 

Commandant  Jost,  entered.  He  was  a 
man  tall  and  slender  and  closely-knit, 
with  a  rich  vein  of  sentiment,  like  all 
good  soldiers.  He  was  perhaps  fifty -two  or 
three  years  of  age.  His  eyebrows  slanted 
down  and  his  moustache  slanted  up.  His 
eyes  were  level  and  keen  in  their  beam 
of  light,  and  they  puckered  into  genial 
lines  when  he  smiled.  His  nose  was 
bent  in  just  at  the  bridge,  where  a  bullet 
once  ploughed  past.  This  mishap  had 
turned  up  the  end  of  a  large  and  formerly 
straight  feature.  It  was  good  to  have 
him  back  again  after  his  fortnight  away. 
The  evening  broke  pleasantly  with  talk 
of  common  friends  in  the  trenches. 

There  came  a  ring  at  the  door.  A 
knob  at  the  outer  door  pulled  a  string 
that  ran  to  their  room  and  released  a 
tiny  tinkle.  Victor,  the  orderly, 
answered  the  ring.  He  had  a  message 
for  the  Commandant.  Jost  held  it  high 
up  to  read  it  by  the  lamp.  Hilda 
brought  a  lighted  candle,  and  placed  it 


80    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

on  the  table.  He  sat  down,  wrote  his 
answer,  and  gave  it  to  the  waiting 
soldier.  He  returned,  closed  the  door, 
and  looked  straight  into  the  face  of 
each  of  his  friends. 

"You  have  to  go?"  asked  Hilda. 

"We  expect  an  attack,"  he  answered. 
It  was  then  9:30. 

"What  time?"  asked  Hilda. 

"The  Dixmude  and  Ramskappele  at- 
tacks were  just  before  dawn.  When 
the  mists  begin  to  rise,  and  the  enemy 
can  see  even  dimly,  then  they  attack. 
I  think  they  will  attack  to-night,  just  so." 

"How  does  that  concern  you?"  asked 
Hilda.  "What  do  you  have  to  do?" 

"I  have  just  asked  my  Colonel  that 
I  take  thirty  of  my  men  and  guard  the 
section  in  front  of  the  railroad  tracks. 
That  is  where  they  will  come  through." 

"What  is  the  situation  in  the  trenches, 
to-night?"  asked  Hilda. 

"We  have  only  a  handful.  Not  more 
than  fifty  men." 


ROLLO,   THE  APOLLO          81 

"Not  more  than  fifty!"  cried  Mrs. 
Bracher.  "How  many  mitrailleuse  have 
you  at  the  railroad?" 

"Six,  two  in  the  second  story  of  the 
house,  and  four  in  the  station  opposite." 

"Six  ought  to  be  enough  to  rake  the 
road." 

"Yes,  but  they  won't  come  down  the 
road,"  explained  Jost;  "they  will  come 
across  the  flooded  field  on  rafts,  with 
machine  guns  on  the  rafts.  They  can 
come  down  on  both  sides  of  the  trench, 
and  rake  the  trench.  What  can  fifty 
men  do  against  four  or  five  machine 
guns?  They  will  have  to  run  like  hares, 
or  else  be  shot  down  to  a  man.  They 
can  rake  the  trenches  for  two  miles  on 
each  side." 

"What  will  happen  if  the  Germans 
get  on  top  of  the  trenches?"  asked  Mrs. 
Bracher. 

"The  very  first  thing  they  will  do  - 
they    will    place    a    gun    on    top    of    the 
trench,  and  rake  this  whole  town.     They 


82    YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

can  rake  the  road  that  leads  to  Furnes. 
It  would  cut  off  your  retreat  to  Furnes." 

That  meant  the  only  escape  for  the 
women  would  be  through  the  back-yard, 
and  over  fields  knee-deep  in  mud,  where 
dead  horses  lie  loosely  buried  in  hum- 
mock graves. 

"What  do  you  think  we  had  better 
do?"  asked  Hilda.  "To  leave  now  seems 
like  shirking  our  job." 

"There'll  be  no  job  for  you,  if  the 
enemy  come  through  to-night,"  returned 
the  Commandant;  "they'll  do  the  job. 
But  listen,  you'll  have  a  little  time.  If 
you  hear  rifle  fire  or  mitrailleuse  fire  on 
the  trenches,  then  go,  as  fast  as  you  can 
run.  If  you  hear  as  few  as  only  four 
soldiers  running  down  this  road,  take  to 
your  heels  after  them.  That  will  be 
your  last  chance." 

The  bell  tinkled  again.  The  orderly 
called  the  Commandant  into  the  hall. 
Jost  returned  with  a  message.  He  read 
it,  and  pulled  out  a  note-book  from  his 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  83 

pocket.  He  consulted  it  with  care.  He 
sat  down  at  the  table,  wrote  his  reply, 
and  gave  it  to  the  messenger.  He  re- 
turned, shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  went 
silent.  All  waited  for  him  to  speak. 
Finally  he  roused  himself. 

"The  mitrailleuse  have  only  3500 
rounds  left  to  each  gun,"  he  said,  "and 
there  are  no  cartridges  in  the  trenches." 

"That  means,"  prompted  Hilda. 

"Four  hundred  cartridges  a  minute, 
those  guns  fire,"  he  said,  "that  means 
eight  or  nine  minutes,  and  then  the 
Germans." 

A  pounding  came  at  the  front  door. 
A  captain  entered,  throwing  his  long 
cape  over  his  shoulder. 

"We  have  no  ammunition,"  he  said  — 
"the  men  have  nothing.  I've  just  come 
from  the  Colonel." 

The  Captain  was  excited,  the  Com- 
mandant silent. 

"Shall  we  evacuate?"  Hilda  pressed 
her  question  with  him. 


84    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"I  cannot  answer  for  you,"  the  Cap- 
tain said.  "If  the  enemy  attack,  there's 
nothing  to  hold  them.  They'll  come 
through.  If  they  come,  they'll  take  you 
women  prisoners  or  kill  you.  You'll 
have  to  make  your  choice  now.  There 
will  be  no  choice  then." 

"Furnes  isn't  so  prosperous,  you 
know,"  said  Hilda,  "even  if  we  did  run 
back  there." 

Only  the  day  before,  Furnes  had 
received  a  long-distance  bombardment 
that  had  killed  thirty  persons  and 
wounded  one  hundred. 

At  a  word  from  the  Commandant, 
the  orderly  left  the  room.  The  women 
heard  him  drive  their  ambulance  out 
from  shelter,  crank  up  the  engine,  and 
run  it  for  five  minutes  to  get  it  thoroughly 
heated.  Then  he  turned  the  engine  off, 
and  put  a  blanket  over  the  radiator, 
tucking  it  well  in  to  preserve  the  heat. 

"Let's  put  what  we  need  into  the 
car,"  suggested  Mrs.  Bracher. 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  85 

They  picked  up  their  bags,  and  went 
toward  the  ambulance. 

It  was  pleasant  to  do  something  active 
under  that  tension.  They  stepped  out 
into  a  night  of  chill  and  blackness.  They 
could  not  see  ten  feet  in  front  of  them. 
It  was  moon-time  but  no  moon.  Heavy 
clouds  were  in  possession  of  the  sky, 
weaving  a  thick  texture  of  darkness. 

"There  they  start,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant. 

Shell  fire  was  beginning  from  the  north, 
from  the  direction  of  the  sea. 

"They  are  covering  their  advance," 
he  went  on. 

"Those  are  21  or  28  Point  shells. 
They  are  falling  short  about  1800  yards, 
but  they  are  coming  straight  in  our 
direction." 

They  walked  past  their  car  and  down 
the  road.  They  looked  across  the  fields 
into  the  black  night.  Straight  down  the 
road  a  lamp  suddenly  shone  in  the 
gloom.  It  moved  to  and  fro,  and  up 


86    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

and  down.  There  was  regularity  in  its 
motion.  A  great  shaft  of  answering 
white  light  shot  up  into  the  night  from 
the  north. 

"They  are  signalling  from  inside  our 
line  here,"  said  the  Commandant,  "over 
there  to  the  enemy  guns  beyond  Ram- 
skappele.  Some  spy  down  here  with  a 
flash-lamp  is  telling  them  that  we're  out 
of  ammunition." 

"But  can't  we  catch  the  spy?"  urged 
Hilda.  "That  light  doesn't  look  to  be 
more  than  a  few  hundred  yards  away." 

"That  is  further  away  than  it  looks," 
answered  Jost;  "that's  all  of  a  mile  away. 
He's  hidden  somewhere  in  a  field." 

Mrs.  Bracher  seized  Victor  by  the 
arm,  and  faced  the  Commandant. 

"I  know  where  he's  hidden,"  she 
cried.  "Let  me  show  you." 

The  Commandant  nodded  assent. 

"Messieurs,  les  Beiges,"  she  com- 
manded in  a  sharp,  high  voice,  "come 
with  me  and  move  quickly!" 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO          87 

She  brought  them  back  to  the  car. 

"Send  for  four  of  your  men,"  she  said 
to  Jost.  They  came. 

"Wait  in  the  house,"  she  said  to  Hilda. 

"Now  we  start,"  Mrs.  Bracher 
ordered.  "Victor,  you  take  the  wheel. 
Drive  down  the  Furnes  road." 

They  drove  in  silence  for  five  minutes, 
till  her  quick  eye  picked  a  landmark  out 
of  the  dimness. 

"Drive  the  car  slowly  past,  and  on 
down  the  road,"  she  ordered,  "don't 
stop  it.  We  six  must  dismount  while 
it  is  moving.  Surround  the  house 
quietly.  The  Commandant  and  I  will 
enter  by  the  front  door." 

They  had  come  to  the  deserted  farm- 
house. It  loomed  dimly  out  of  the 
vacant  fields  and  against  the  background 
of  travelling  clouds.  Victor  stayed  at 
the  wheel.  Mrs.  Bracher,  the  Com- 
mandant, and  the  four  soldiers,  jumped 
off  into  the  road.  The  six  silently  filed 
into  the  door-yard.  The  four  soldiers 


88    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

melted  into  the  night.  Mrs.  Bracher 
caught  the  handle  of  the  door  firmly  and 
shoved.  The  door  gave  way.  She  and 
Jost  stepped  inside.  The  Commandant 
drew  his  pistol.  He  flashed  his  pocket 
light  down  the  hall  and  up  the  stairs. 
There  was  nothing  but  vacancy.  They 
passed  into  the  room  at  their  right  hand. 
Jost's  light  searched  its  way  around  the 
room.  In  the  corner,  stood  a  tall  soldier, 
dressed  in  green. 

"Let  me  introduce  Monsieur  Rollo, 
the  spy,"  said  Mrs.  Bracher.  There 
was  triumph  in  her  voice.  The  Com- 
mandant put  a  whistle  to  his  lips  and 
blew.  His  four  men  came  stamping  in, 
pistols  in  hand. 

"Clever  device,  this,"  said  Mrs. 
Bracher.  She  had  stooped  and  lifted 
out  a  large  electric  flash  lamp  from 
under  a  sweater. 

"Clever  woman,  this,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant, saluting  Mrs.  Bracher.  "How 
did  you  come  to  know  the  place?" 


ROLLO,   THE   APOLLO  89 

"Monsieur  Rollo  uses  double  tires  on 
a  wet  soil,"  she  explained. 

"Monsieur  Rollo  will  now  bring  his 
signal  lamp  outside  the  house,"  the 
Commandant  said  curtly.  "He  will  signal 
the  enemy  that  our  reinforcements  and 
ammunition  have  arrived,  and  that  an 
attack  to-night  will  be  hopeless.  He 
may  choose  to  signal  wrongly.  In  that 
case,  you  men  will  shoot  him  on  the 
instant  that  firing  begins  at  Pervyse." 

The  soldiers  nodded.  They  marched 
Rollo  to  the  field,  and  thrust  his  signal 
lamp  into  his  hands. 

"One  moment,"  he  said.  He  turned 
to  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"Where  is  the  American  girl  to-night?" 
he  asked. 

"At  Pervyse,  of  course,"  replied  the 
nurse,  "where  she  always  is.  The  very 
place  where  you  wanted  to  bring  your 
men  through  and  kill  us  all." 

"I  had  forgotten,"  he  said.  "If  Made- 
moiselle Hilda  is  at  Pervyse,  then  I 


90    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

signal,  as  you  suggest"  —  he  turned  to 
the  Commandant  —  "but  not  because 
you  order  it  —  you  and  your  little  pop- 
guns." 

Mrs.  Bracher  sniffed  scornfully. 

"One  last  bluff  of  a  bluffer,  as  Hilda 
would  say,"  she  muttered. 

The  soldiers  stood  in  circle  in  the  mud 
of  the  field,  the  tall  green-clad  figure  in 
their  midst. 

Rollo  turned  on  the  blinding  flash  that 
stabbed  through  the  night.  He  held  it 
high  above  his  head,  and  at  that  level 
moved  it  three  times  from  left  to  right. 
Then  he  swung  the  light  in  full  circles, 
till  it  became  a  pinwheel  of  flame.  Four 
miles  away  by  the  sea  to  the  north,  a 
white  light  shot  up  into  the  sky,  rose 
twice  like  a  fountain,  and  was  followed 
by  a  starlight  that  fed  out  a  green 
radiance. 

"The  attack  is  postponed,"  he  said. 


THE  BROTHERHOOD  OF   MAN 

The  German  lay  on  a  stretcher  in  the  straw 
of  the  first  dressing-station.  His  legs  had 
been  torn  by  shot.  He  was  in  pain.  He 
looked  into  the  faces  of  the  men  about  him, 
the  French  doctors  and  dressers,  the  Belgian 
infantry.  The  lantern  light  was  white  and 
yellow  on  their  faces.  He  drew  out  from  the 
inner  pocket  of  his  mouse-colored  coat  a 
packet  of  letters,  and  from  the  packet  the 
picture  of  a  stout  woman,  who,  like  himself, 
was  of  middle-age.  He  handed  it  to  the 
French  doctor.  "  Meine  Frau,"  he  said. 

At  the  outer  rim  of  the  group,  a  Belgian 
drew  a  knife,  ran  it  lightly  across  his  own 
throat,  and  pointed  mockingly  to  the  German 
on  the  stretcher. 


IV 
THE   PIANO   OF   PERVYSE 

Commandant  stepped  down 
from  his  watch  tower  by  the 
^  railway  tracks.  This  watch 
tower  was  a  house  that  had  been  struck 
but  not  tumbled  by  the  bombardment. 
It  was  black  and  gashed,  and  looked 
deserted.  That  was  the  merit  of  it,  for 
every  minute  of  the  day  and  night,  some 
watcher  of  the  Belgians  sat  in  the 
window,  one  flight  up,  by  the  two 
machine  guns,  gazing  out  over  the 
flooded  fields,  and  the  thin  white  strip 
of  road  that  led  eastward  to  the  enemy 
trenches.  Once,  fifteen  mouse-colored 
uniforms  had  made  a  sortie  down  the 
road  and  toward  the  house,  but  the  eye 
at  the  window  had  sighted  them,  and  let 
them  draw  close  till  the  aim  was  very 


94    YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

sure.  Since  then,  there  had  been  no 
one  coming  down  the  road.  But  a 
watcher,  turn  by  turn,  was  always  wait- 
ing. The  Commandant  liked  the  post, 
for  it  was  the  key  to  the  safety  of 
Pervyse.  He  felt  he  was  guarding  the 
three  women,  when  he  sat  there  on  the 
rear  supports  of  a  battered  chair,  and 
smoked  and  peered  out  into  the  east. 

He  came  slowly  down  the  road,  — 
old  wounds  were  throbbing  in  his  mem- 
bers —  and,  as  always,  turned  into  the 
half-shattered  dwelling  where  the  nurses 
were  making  their  home  and  tending 
their  wounded. 

"How  is  the  sentry-box  to-night?" 
asked  Hilda. 

"Draughty,"  said  the  Commandant, 
with  a  shiver;  "it  rocks  in  the  wind." 

'You  must  have  some  rag-time,"  pre- 
scribed Hilda,  and  seated  herself  at  the 
piano. 

It  was  Pervyse's  only  piano,  untouched 
by  shell  and  shrapnel,  and  nightly  it 


THE   PIANO  OF  PERVYSE      95 

sounded  the  praise  of  things.  The  little 
group  drew  close  about  the  American 
girl,  as  she  led  them  in  a  "coon  song." 

"I  say,"  said  Hilda,  looking  up  from 
the  keys,  "would  any  one  believe  it?" 

"Believe  what?"  asked  Mrs.  Bracher. 

"The  lot  of  us  here,  exchanging  fav- 
orites, with  war  just  outside  our  window. 
I  tell  you,"  repeated  Hilda,  "no  one 
would  believe  it." 

"They  don't  have  to,"  retorted  Mrs. 
Bracher,  sharply.  She  had  grown  weary 
of  telling  folks  at  home  how  matters 
stood,  and  then  having  them  say,  "Fancy 
now,  really?" 

The  methodical  guns  had  pounded  the 
humanity  out  of  Pervyse,  and,  with  the 
living,  had  gone  music  and  art.  There 
was  nowhere  in  the  wasted  area  for 
the  tired  soldiers  to  find  relief  from 
their  monotony.  War  is  a  dreary  thing. 
With  one  fixed  idea  in  the  mind  -  -  to 
wait,  to  watch  for  some  careless  head 
over  the  mounded  earth,  and  then  to 


kill  —  war  is  drearier  than  slave  labor, 
more  nagging  than  an  imperfect  mar- 
riage, more  dispiriting  than  unsuccess- 
ful sin.  The  pretty  brass  utensils  of 
the  dwellings  had  been  pillaged.  Can- 
vas, which  had  once  contained  bright 
faces,  was  in  shreds.  The  figures  of 
Christ  and  his  friends  that  had  stood 
high  in  the  niches  of  the  church,  had 
fallen  forward  on  their  faces.  All  the 
little  devices  of  beauty,  cherished  by 
the  villagers,  had  been  shattered. 

One  perfect  piano  had  been  left  un- 
marred  by  all  the  destruction  that  had 
robbed  the  place  of  its  instruments  of 
pleasure.  With  elation  and  laughter  the 
soldiers  had  discovered  it,  when  the 
early  fierceness  of  the  attack  had  ebbed. 
Straightway  they  carried  it  to  the  home 
of  the  women. 

When  the  Commandant  first  saw  it, 
soon  after  its  arrival  in  their  living-room, 
he  beamed  all  over. 

"The    Broadwood,"    he    said.     "How 


THE   PIANO   OF  PERVYSE      97 

that  brings  back  the  memories!  When 
I  was  a  young  man  once  in  Ostend,  I 
was  one  of  eight  to  play  with  Paderewski, 
that  great  musician.  Yes,  together  we 
played  through  an  afternoon.  And  the 
instrument  on  which  I  played  was  a 
Broad  wood.  I  cannot  now  ever  see  it, 
without  remembering  that  day  in  the 
Kursaal,  and  how  he  led  us  with  that 
fingering,  that  vigor.  Do  you  know  how 
he  lifts  his  hand  high  over  the  keys  and 
then  drops  suddenly  upon  them?" 

'Yes,  I  have  seen  it,"  said  Hilda; 
"like  the  swoop  of  an  eagle." 

"I  do  not  know  that  bird,"  returned 
the  Commandant,  "but  that  is  it.  It 
is  swift  and  strong.  He  comes  out  of 
a  stricken  country,  too;  that  is  why  he 
can  play." 

"I  wonder,  feeling  that  way,  that  you 
ever  gave  up  your  music,"  said  Hilda. 
"Why  didn't  you  go  on  with  it?" 

"I  had  thought  of  it.  But  there  was 
always  something  in  me  that  called,  and 


98    YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

I  went  into  the  army.  For  years  we 
have  known  this  thing  was  coming.  A 
man  could  not  do  otherwise  than  hold 
himself  ready  for  that.  And  now  it  is 
left  to  you  young  people  to  go  on  — 
always  the  new  harmony,  that  sings  in 
the  ears,  and  never  comes  into  the  notes." 
The  Commandant,  Commandant  Jost, 
was  perhaps  the  best  of  all  their  soldier 
friends.  He  was  straight  and  sturdy,  a 
pine-tree  of  a  man  in  his  early  fifties. 
He  was  famous  in  Flanders  for  his  picked 
command  of  110,  all  of  them  brave  as  he 
was  brave,  ready  to  be  wiped  out  be- 
cause of  their  heart  of  courage.  Often 
the  strength  of  his  fighting  group  was 
sapped,  till  one  could  count  his  men  on 
the  fingers  of  the  hands.  But  always 
there  were  fresh  fellows  ready  to  go  the 
road  with  him.  He  never  ordered  them 
into  danger.  He  merely  called  for  volun- 
teers. When  he  went  up  against  absurd 
odds,  and  was  left  for  dead,  his  men  re- 
turned for  him,  and  brought  him  away  for 


THE   PIANO   OF  PERVYSE      99 

another  day.  His  time  hadn't  come,  he 
said.  It  was  no  use  shooting  him 
down,  and  clipping  the  bridge  from  his 
nose,  —  when  his  day  came,  he  would 
be  done  for,  but  not  ahead  of  that. 
This  valiant  Belgian  soldier  was  a  mys- 
tic of  war. 

In  the  trenches  and  at  the  hospitals, 
Hilda  had  met  a  race  of  prophets,  men 
who  carry  about  foreknowledge  and  pre- 
monitions. Sturdy  bearded  fellows  who 
salute  you  as  men  about  to  die.  They 
are  perfectly  cheery,  as  brave  as  the 
unthinking  at  their  side,  but  they  tramp 
firmly  to  a  certain  end.  War  lets  loose 
the  rich  life  of  subconsciousness  which 
most  mortals  keep  bottled  up  in  the 
sleepy  secular  days  of  humdrum.  Peril 
and  sudden  death  uncork  those  heady 
vapors,  and  sharpen  the  super-senses. 
This  race  of  men  with  their  presciences 
have  no  quarrel  with  death.  They  have 
made  their  peace  with  it.  It  is  merely 
that  they  carry  a  foreknowledge  of  it  — 


100  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

they  are  sure  they  will  know  when  it  is 
on  the  way. 

No  man  of  the  troops  was  more  smit- 
ten with  second-sight,  than  this  friend 
of  the  Pervyse  women,  this  courageous 
Commandant.  His  eyes  were  level  to 
command,  but  they  grew  distant  and 
luminous  when  his  mood  was  on  him. 
This  gift  in  him  called  out  the  like  in 
other  men,  and  his  pockets  were  heavy 
with  the  keepsakes  of  young  soldiers,  a 
photograph  of  the  beloved,  a  treasured 
coin,  a  good-bye  letter,  which  he  was 
commissioned  to  carry  to  the  dear 
one,  when  the  giver  should  fall.  With 
little  faith  that  he  himself  would  exe- 
cute the  commissions,  he  had  carefully 
labelled  each  memento  with  the  name 
and  address  of  its  destination.  For 
he  knew  that  whatever  was  found  on 
his  body,  the  body  of  the  fighting 
Commandant,  the  King's  friend,  would 
receive  speedy  forwarding  to  its  appointed 
place. 


THE   PIANO   OF  PERVYSE     101 

It  was  an  evening  of  spring,  but  spring 
had  come  with  little  promise  that  way. 
Ashes  of  homes  and  the  sour  dead  lay  too 
thickly  over  those  fields,  for  nature  to 
make  her  great  recovery  in  one  season. 
The  task  was  too  heavy  for  even  her 
vast  renewals.  Patience,  she  seemed  to 
say,  I  come  again. 

The  Commandant  was  sitting  at  ease 
enjoying  his  pipe. 

"Mademoiselle  Hilda,"  said  he.  Hilda 
was  sitting  at  the  piano,  but  no  tunes 
were  flowing.  She  was  behaving  badly 
that  evening  and  she  knew  it.  She 
fumbled  with  the  sheaves  of  music,  and 
chucked  Scotch  under  the  chin,  and 
doctored  the  candles.  She  was  manifest- 
ing all  the  younger  elements  in  her 
twenty-two  years. 

"Mademoiselle  Hilda,"  insisted  the 
Commandant.  He  was  sentimental,  and 
full  of  old-world  courtesies,  but  he  was 
used  to  being  obeyed.  Hilda  became 
rapt  in  contemplating  a  candlestick. 


102  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"Mademoiselle  Hilda,  a  little  music, 
if  you  please,"  he  said  with  a  finality. 

"You  play,"  said  Hilda  to  Scotch, 
sliding  off  the  soap-box  which  served 
to  uphold  the  artist  to  her  instrument. 

"Hilda,  you  make  me  tired,"  chided 
Scotch.  "The  Commandant  has  given 
you  his  orders." 

"Oh,  all  right,"  said  Hilda. 

She  played  pleasantly  with  feeling  and 
technique.  More  of  her  hidden  life  came 
to  an  utterance  with  her  music  than  at 
other  times.  She  led  her  notes  gently  to 
a  close. 

"Mademoiselle  Hilda,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant from  his  seat  in  the  shadows 
on  the  sofa,  "parlez-vous  frangais?" 

This  was  his  regular  procedure.  Why 
did  he  say  it?  They  never  could  guess. 
He  knew  that  the  women,  all  three, 
understood  French  —  Mrs.  Bracher  and 
Scotch  speaking  it  fluently,  Hilda,  as 
became  an  American,  haltingly.  Did  he 
not  carry  on  most  of  his  converse  with 


THE   PIANO  OF  PERVYSE     103 

them  in  French  —  always,  when  eloquent 
or  sentimental?  But  unfailingly  he  used 
his  formula,  when  he  was  highly  pleased. 
They  decided  he  must  once  have  known 
some  fair  foreigner  who  could  only  faintly 
stammer  in  his  native  tongue,  and  that 
the  habit  of  address  had  then  become 
fixed  upon  him  for  moments  of  emotion. 

He  repeated  his  question. 

"Oui,"  responded  the  girl.  He  kissed 
his  fingers  lightly  to  her,  and  waved  the 
tribute  in  her  direction,  as  if  it  could  be 
wafted  across  the  room. 

"Chere  artiste,"  said  he,  with  a  voice 
of  conviction. 

"And  now  the  bacarolle,"  he  pleaded. 

"There  are  many  bacarolles,"  she  ob- 
jected. 

"I  know,  I  know,"  he  said,  "and  yet, 
after  all,  there  is  only  one  bacarolle." 

"All  right,"  she  answered,  obediently, 
and  played  on.  The  music  died  away, 
and  the  girl  in  her  fought  against  the 
response  that  she  knew  was  coming.  She 


104  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

began  turning  over  sheets  of  music  on 
the  rack.  But  the  Commandant  was 
not  to  be  balked. 

"Parlez-vous  frangais?"  he  inquired, 
"vous,  Mademoiselle  Hilda." 

"Oui,  mon  Commandant,"  she  an- 
swered. 

"Chere  artiste,"  he  said;  "chere 
artiste." 

"Ah,  those  two  voices,"  he  went  on 
with  a  sigh;  "they  go  with  you,  wherever 
you  are.  It  is  music,  that  night  of  love 
and  joy.  And  here  we  sit  — " 

"Yes,  yes,"  interrupted  Mrs.  Bracher, 
who  did  not  care  to  have  an  evening  of 
gaiety  sag  to  melancholy;  "how  about  a 
little  Cesar  Franck?" 

"Yes,  surely,"  agreed  the  Comman- 
dant, cheerily;  "our  own  composer,  you 
know,  though  we  never  gave  him  his 
due." 

Hilda  ran  through  the  opening  of  the 
D  Minor. 

"Now  it  is  your  turn,"  said  she. 


THE   PIANO   OF   PERVYSE    105 

"My  fingers  are  something  stiff,  with 
these  cold  nights  by  the  window,"  replied 
the  Commandant,  "but  certainly  I  will 
endeavor  to  play." 

He  seated  himself  at  the  instrument. 

"Chere  artiste,"  he  murmured  to  the 
girl,  who  was  retreating  to  the  lounge. 

The  Commandant  played  well.  He 
needed  no  notes,  for  he  was  stored  with 
remembered  bits.  He  often  played  to 
them  of  an  evening,  before  he  took  his 
turn  on  watch.  He  played  quietly  along 
for  a  little.  Out  of  the  dark  at  their 
north  window,  there  came  the  piping 
of  a  night  bird.  Birds  were  the  only 
creatures  seemingly  untouched  by  the 
war.  The  fields  were  crowded  thick 
with  the  bodies  of  faithful  cavalry  and 
artillery  horses.  Dogs  and  cats  had 
wasted  away  in  the  seared  area.  Cattle 
had  been  mowed  down  by  machine  guns. 
Heavy  sows  and  their  tiny  yelping  litter, 
were  shot  as  they  trundled  about,  or, 
surviving  the  far-cast  invisible  death, 


106  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

were  spitted  for  soldiers'  rations.  And 
with  men,  the  church-yard  and  the  fields, 
and  even  the  running  streams,  were 
choked.  Only  birds  of  the  air,  of  all  the 
living,  had  remained  free  of  their  ele- 
ment, floating  over  the  battling  below 
them,  as  blithe  as  if  men  had  not  sown 
the  lower  spaces  with  slaughter. 

And  now  in  this  night  of  spring,  one 
was  calling  to  its  mate.  The  Com- 
mandant heard  it,  and  struck  its  note  on 
the  upper  keyboard. 

"Every  sound  in  nature  has  its  key," 
he  said;  "the  cry  of  the  little  bird  has 
it,  and  the  surf  at  Nieuport." 

"And  the  shells?"  asked  Hilda. 

"Yes,  the  shells,  they  have  it,"  he 
answered  gravely;  "each  one  of  them,  as 
it  whistles  in  the  air,  is  giving  its  note. 
You  have  heard  it?" 

:<Yes,"  answered  Hilda. 

"Why,  this,"  he  said.  He  held  his 
hands  widely  apart  to  indicate  the  key- 
board—  "this  is  only  a  little  human 


THE   PIANO  OF  PERVYSE    107 

dipping,  like  a  bucket,  into  the  ocean 
waves  of  sound.  It  can't  give  us  back 
one  little  part  of  what  is.  Only  a  poor, 
stray  sound  out  of  the  many  can  get 
itself  registered.  The  rest  drift  away, 
lost  birds  on  the  wing.  The  notes  in 
between,  the  splintered  notes,  they  can- 
not sound  on  our  little  instruments." 

A  silence  had  fallen  on  the  group. 
Out  of  the  hushed  night  that  covered 
them,  a  moaning  grew,  that  they  knew 
well.  One  second,  two  seconds  of  it,  and 
then  the  thud  fell  somewhere  up  the  line. 
As  the  shell  was  wailing  in  the  air,  a 
hidden  string,  inside  the  frame,  quivered 
through  its  length,  and  gave  out  an 
under-hum.  It  was  as  if  a  far  away  call 
had  rung  it  up.  One  gun  alone,  out  of 
all  the  masked  artillery,  had  found  the 
key,  and,  from  seven  miles  away,  played 
the  taut  string. 

"There  is  one  that  registers,"  said  the 
Commandant;  "the  rest  go  past  and  no 
echo  here." 


108  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

Firmly  he  struck  the  note  that  had 
vibrated. 

"That  gun  is  calling  for  me,"  said  he; 
"the  others  are  lost  in  the  night.  But 
that  gun  will  find  me." 

"You  talk  like  a  soothsayer,"  said 
Mrs.  Bracher,  with  a  sudden  gesture  of 
her  hand  and  arm,  as  if  she  were  brushing 
away  a  mist. 

"It's  all  folly,"  she  went  on,  "I  don't 
believe  it.  Good  heavens,  what  is  that?" 
she  added,  as  a  footstep  crunched  in  the 
hall-way.  "You've  got  me  all  unstrung, 
you  and  your  croaking." 

An  orderly  entered  and  saluted  the 
Commandant. 

"They've  got  the  range  of  the  Station, 
mon  Commandant,"  he  reported;  "they 
have  just  sent  a  shell  into  the  tracks. 
It  is  dangerous  in  the  look-out  of  the 
house.  Do  you  wish  Victor  to  remain?" 

"I  will  relieve  him,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant, and  he  left  swiftly  and  silently, 
as  was  his  wont. 


THE   PIANO   OF   PERVYSE    109 

Hilda  returned  to  the  piano,  and 
began  softly  playing,  with  the  hush- 
pedal  on.  The  two  women  drew  close 
around  her.  Suddenly  she  released  the 
pedal,  and  lifted  her  hands  from  the 
keys,  as  if  they  burned  her.  One  string 
was  still  faintly  singing  which  she  had 
not  touched,  the  string  of  the  key  that 
the  Commandant  had  struck. 

"Mercy,  child,  what  ails  you?"  ex- 
claimed Mrs.  Bracher.  'You've  all  got 
the  fidgets  to-night." 

"That  string  again,"  said  the  girl. 

She  rose  from  the  piano,  and  went 
out  into  the  night.  They  heard  her 
footsteps  on  the  road. 

"Hilda,  Hilda,"  called  Scotch,  loudly. 

"Leave  her  alone,  she  is  fey,"  said 
Mrs.  Bracher.  "I  know  her  in  these 
moods.  You  can't  interfere.  You  must 
let  her  go." 

"We  can  at  least  see  where  she  goes," 
urged  Scotch. 

They  followed  her  at  a  distance.     She 


110  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE  WARS 

went  swiftly  up  the  road,  and  straight 
to  the  railway  tracks.  She  entered  the 
house,  the  dark,  wrecked  house,  where 
from  the  second  story  window,  a  per- 
petual look-out  was  kept,  like  the  watch 
of  the  Vestal  Virgins.  They  came  to  the 
open  door,  and  heard  her  ascend  to  the 
room  of  the  vigil. 

"You  must  come,"  they  heard  her 
say,  "come  at  once." 

"No,  no,"  answered  the  voice  of  the 
Commandant,  "I  am  on  duty  here. 
But  you  —  what  brings  you  here?  You 
cannot  stay.  Go  at  once.  I  order  you." 

"I  shall  not  go  till  you  go,"  the  girl 
replied  in  expressionless  tones. 

"I  tell  you  to  go,"  repeated  the  Com- 
mandant in  angry  but  suppressed  voice. 

"You  can  shoot  me,"  said  the  girl, 
"but  I  will  not  go  without  you.  Come 
her  voice  turned  to  pleading  — 
"Come,  while  there  is  time." 

"My  time  has  come,"  said  the  Com- 
mandant. "It  is  here  —  my  end." 


THE   PIANO  OF  PERVYSE    111 

"Then  for  me,  too,"  she  said,  "but  I 
have  come  to  take  you  from  it.'* 

There  was  a  silence  of  a  few  seconds, 
then  the  sound  of  a  chair  scraping  the 
floor,  heavy  boots  on  the  boarding,  and 
the  two,  Commandant  and  girl,  descend- 
ing the  stairs.  Unastonished,  they 
stepped  out  and  found  the  two  women 
waiting. 

"We  must  save  the  girl,"  said  the 
Commandant.  "Come,  run  for  it,  all  of 
you,  run!" 

He  pushed  them  forward  with  his 
hands,  and  back  down  the  road  they  had 
come.  He  ran  and  they  ran  till  they 
reached  their  dwelling,  and  entered,  and 
stood  at  the  north  window,  looking  over 
toward  the  dim  house  from  which  they 
had  escaped.  Out  from  the  still  night 
of  darkness,  came  a  low  thunder  from 
beyond  the  Yser.  In  the  tick  of  a  pulse- 
beat,  the  moaning  of  a  shell  throbbed  on 
the  air  and,  with  instant  vibrancy,  the 
singing  string  of  the  piano  at  their  back 


112  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

answered  the  flight  of  the  shell.  And  in 
the  same  breath,  they  heard  a  roar  at 
the  railroad,  and  the  crash  of  timbers. 
Soft  licking  flames  broke  out  in  the  house 
of  the  Belgian  watchers.  Slowly  but 
powerfully,  the  flames  gathered  volume, 
and  swept  up  their  separate  tongues  into 
one  bright  blaze,  till  the  house  was  a 
bonfire  against  the  heavy  sky. 


LOST 

There  were  cities  in  Belgium  of  medieval 
loveliness,  where  the  evening  light  lay  in 
deep  purple  on  canals  seeping  at  founda- 
tions of  castle  and  church,  with  the  sacred 
towers  tall  in  the  sky,  and  a  moon  just 
over  them,  and  a  star  or  two  beside. 

That  beauty  has  been  torn  out  of  a  man's 
consciousness  and  spoiled  to  his  love  for 
ever,  by  moving  up  a  howitzer  and  priming 
it  with  destruction.  First,  the  rumble  of 
the  gun  from  far  away,  then  the  whistle 
of  flying  metal,  sharpening  its  anger  as  it 
nears,  then  the  thud  and  roar  of  explosion 
as  it  clutches  and  dissolves  its  mark.  Now 
its  seven-mile  journey  is  ended.  It  has 
found  its  home  and  its  home  is  a  ruin. 
Over  the  peaceful  earth  and  under  a  silent 
sky,  bits  of  destruction  are  travelling,  pro- 
jections of  the  human  will.  Where  lately 
there  was  a  soft  outline,  rising  from  the 


114  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

soil  as  if  the  stones  of  the  field  had  been 
called  together  by  the  same  breath  that 
spread  the  forest,  now  there  is  a  heap  of 
rock-dust.  Man,  infinite  in  faculty,  has 
narrowed  his  devising  to  the  uses  of  havoc. 
He  has  lifted  his  hand  against  the  im- 
mortal part  of  himself.  He  has  said  — 
"  The  works  I  have  wrought  I  will  turn 
back  to  the  dust  out  of  which  they  came" 

All  the  good  labor  of  minds  and  hands 
which  we  cannot  bring  back  is  undone  in 
an  instant  of  time  by  a  few  pounds  of 
chemical.  That  can  be  burned  and  broken 
in  the  passage  of  one  cloud  over  the  moon 
which  not  all  the  years  of  a  century  will 
restore.  Seasons  return,  but  not  to  us 
returns  the  light  in  the  windows  of  Rheims. 


V 

WAR 

*HERE  fell  a  day  when  the  call 
came  from  Ypres  to  aid  the 
English.  A  bitter  hot  engage- 
ment had  been  fought  for  seven  days, 
with  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand 
men  in  action,  and  the  woods  and  fields 
on  the  Hoogar  road  were  strewn  with 
the  wounded.  Dr.  McDonnell,  the  head 
of  the  Ambulance  Corps,  rode  over  from 
Furnes  to  the  shell-blackened  house  of 
the  nurses  in  Pervyse.  With  him  he 
brought  Woffington,  a  young  Englishman, 
to  drive  the  ambulance.  He  asked  Hilda 
to  go  with  them  to  Ypres. 

"Scotch,    English    and    American,    all 

on  one  seat,"   said   Hilda  with   a  smile. 

They  covered  the  thirty  miles  in  one 

hour,  and  went  racing  through  the  city 


116  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

of  Ypres,  eastward  toward  the  action. 
Half  way  out  to  the  noise  of  artillery, 
their  car  was  stopped  by  an  English  officer, 
handsome,  courteous,  but  very  firm. 

"You  cannot  go  out  on  this  road," 
he  said. 

"We  will  be  back  before  you  know  it," 
pleaded  Hilda.  ;<  We  will  bring  back  your 
wounded.  Let  me  show  you." 

"Report  to  me  on  your  way  back," 
he  ordered.  "My  name  is  Fitzgerald, 
Captain  Fitzgerald." 

They  rode  on.  All  down  the  road, 
straggled  wounded  men,  three  miles  of 
them  limped,  they  held  up  a  red  hand, 
they  carried  a  shattered  arm  in  a  sling. 
There  was  blood  on  their  faces.  They 
walked  with  bowed  head,  tired. 

"These  are  the  lucky  ones,"  said  Wof- 
fington,  "they  only  got  scotched." 

That  was  the  famous  battle  of  Ypres. 
Of  the  dead  there  were  more  than  the 
mothers  of  a  countryside  could  replace 
in  two  generations.  But  death  is  war's 


WAR  117 

best  gift.  War's  other  gifts  are  malicious 
—  fever  and  plague,  and  the  maiming 
of  strength,  and  the  fouling  of  beauty  — 
shapely  bodies  tortured  to  strange  forms, 
eager  young  faces  torn  away.  Death  is 
choicer  than  that,  a  release  from  the 
horror  of  life  trampled  like  a  filthy  weed. 

"Mons  was  a  birthday  party  to  this," 
said  a  Tommy  to  Hilda.  "They're  ex- 
pecting too  much  of  us.  The  whole  thing 
is  put  on  us  to  do,  and  it  takes  a  lot 
of  doing." 

Dr.  McDonnell  and  Woffington  loaded 
the  car  with  the  severest  of  the  cases, 
and  returned  to  the  white  house  of  the 
Officer.  He  was  waiting  for  them,  grim, 
attentive. 

Hilda  flung  up  the  hood: --two  Tom- 
mies at  length  on  the  stretchers  on  one 
side  of  the  car;  opposite  them,  seven 
Tommies  in  a  row  with  hand,  arm,  foot, 
leg,  shoulder,  neck  and  breast  wounds. 
It  was  too  good  a  piece  of  rescue  work 
to  be  strangled  with  Red  Tape.  The 


118  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

Officer  could  not  refrain  from  a  smile  of 
approval. 

"You  may  work  along  this  road,"  he 
said,  "but  look  out  for  the  other  offi- 
cers. They  will  probably  stop  you.  But, 
remember,  my  permission  holds  good 
only  for  to-day.  Then  you  must  go 
back.  This  isn't  according  to  regula- 
tions. Now,  go  on  to  the  hospital." 

Ten  minutes  more,  and  they  swung 
inside  the  great  iron  gates  of  the  Sisters 
of  Mercy.  Never  had  Hilda  felt  the  war 
so  keenly  as  now.  She  had  been  dealing 
with  it  bit  by  bit.  But  here  it  was 
spread  out  beyond  all  dealing  with.  She 
had  to  face  it  without  solutions. 

There,  in  the  Convent,  known  now 
as  Military  Hospital  Number  One,  was 
row  after  row  of  Khaki  men  in  bed. 
They  had  overflowed  to  the  stone  floor 
down  the  long  corridors,  hundreds  of 
yards  of  length,  and  every  foot  close 
packed,  like  fish  in  a  tin,  with  helpless 
outstretched  men.  The  grey  stones  and 


WAR  119 

the  drab  suits  on  the  bundles  of  straw,  — 
what  a  backwash  from  the  tides  of 
slaughter.  If  a  man  stood  on  his  feet, 
he  had  to  reach  for  a  cane.  There  were 
no  whole  men  there,  except  the  busy 
stretcher-bearers  bringing  in  new  tenants 
for  the  crowded  smelly  place. 

As  quickly  as  they  could  unload  their 
men,  and  stuff  them  into  the  corridor, 
Hilda  and  the  doctor  and  Woffington 
sped  back  down  the  line,  and  up  to 
the  thronged  dressing-stations.  Wounded 
men  were  not  their  only  charge,  nor 
their  gravest.  They  took  in  a  soldier 
sobbing  from  the  shock  of  the  ceaseless 
shell  fire.  The  moaning  and  wasp-like 
buzz  of  the  flying  metal,  then  the  earth- 
shaking  thud  of  its  impact,  and  the  roar 
of  its  high  explosive,  had  played  upon 
nerves  not  elastic  enough  to  absorb 
the  strain,  till  the  man  became  a 
whimpering  child.  And  they  carried  in 
a  man  shaking  from  ague,  a  big,  fine 
fellow,  trembling  in  every  part,  who 


120  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

could  not  lift  a  limb  to  walk.  That 
which  had  been  rugged  enough  for  a 
lifetime  of  work  became  palsied  after 
a  few  weeks  of  this  king's  sport.  This 
undramatic  slaughter  was  slower  than 
the  work  of  the  guns,  but  it  was  as 
thorough.  A  man  with  colic  was  put 
into  the  car. 

"I'm  bad,"  he  said.  The  pain  kept 
griping  him,  so  that  he  rode  leaning  down 
with  his  face  pointed  at  the  footboard. 

Working  as  Hilda  worked,  with  her 
two  efficient  friends  and  a  well-equipped 
dressing-station,  their  own  hospital  only 
seven  miles  to  the  rear  of  them,  she  had 
been  able  to  measure  up  to  any  situation 
that  had  been  thrust  at  her.  It  was 
buckle  to  it,  and  work  furiously,  and 
clean  up  the  mess,  and  then  on  to  the 
next.  But  here  was  a  wide-spread  misery 
that  overwhelmed  her.  Dr.  McDonnell 
was  as  silent  as  the  girl.  He  had  a 
sensitiveness  to  suffering  which  twenty 
years  of  London  practice  had  not  dulled. 


WAR  121 

The  day  wore  along,  with  spurt  after 
spurt  to  the  front,  and  then  the  slower 
drive  back,  when  Woffington  guided  the 
car  patiently  and  skilfully,  so  that  the 
wounded  men  inside  should  not  be  shaken 
by  the  motion.  They  had  a  snack  of 
luncheon  with  them,  and  ate  it  while 
they  rode.  Their  little  barrel  of  water, 
swinging  between  the  wheels,  had  long 
ago  gone  to  fevered  men. 

"First  ambulance  I've  seen  in  twenty- 
four  hours,"  said  Captain  Davies,  as 
he  came  on  them  out  of  the  dusk  of 
Hoogar  wood.  The  stern  and  unbending 
organization  of  the  military  had  found  it 
necessary  to  hold  a  hundred  or  more 
ambulances  of  the  Royal  Army  Medical 
Corps  in  readiness  all  day  in  the  market 
place  of  Ypres  against  a  sudden  evacua- 
tion. So  there  were  simply  no  cars,  but 
their  one  car,  to  speed  out  to  the  front 
and  gather  the  wounded. 

It  was  strange,  in  the  evening  light,  to 
work  out  along  the  road  between  lines 


122  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

of  poplar  trees.  Dim  forms  kept  passing 
them  —  two  by  two,  each  couple  with  a 
stretcher  and  its  burden.  An  old  farm 
cart  came  jogging  by,  wrenching  its 
body  from  side  to  side  as  it  struck 
invisible  hummocks  and  dipped  into  shell 
holes.  It  was  loaded  with  outstretched 
forms  of  men,  whose  wounds  were  torn  at 
by  the  jerking  of  the  cart.  In  com- 
panies, fresh  men,  talking  in  whispers, 
were  softly  padding  along  the  road  on 
their  way  to  the  trenches,  to  relieve  the 
staled  fighters.  The  wide  silence  was 
only  broken  by  the  occasional  sharp 
clatter  and  ping  of  some  lonely  sniper's 
rifle. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  of  the  evening,  and 
the  ambulance  had  gone  out  one  mile 
beyond  the  hamlet  of  Hoogar.  The 
Doctor  and  Hilda  alighted  at  the  thick 
wood,  which  had  been  hotly  contended 
for,  through  the  seven  days.  It-  had 
been  covered  with  shell  fire  as  thoroughly 
as  a  fishing-net  rakes  a  stream.  They 


WAR  123 

waited  for  Woffington  to  turn  the  car 
around.  It  is  wise  to  leave  a  car  headed 
in  the  direction  of  safety,  when  one  is 
treading  on  disputed  ground. 

A  man  stepped  out  of  the  wood. 

"Are  you  Red  Cross?"  he  asked. 

"Yes,"  said  Dr.  McDonnell,  "and  we 
have  our  motor  ambulance  here." 

"Good!"  answered  the  stranger.  "We 
have  some  wounded  men  in  the  Chateau 
at  the  other  side  of  the  wood.  Come 
with  me." 

"How  far?"  asked  Hilda. 

"Oh,  not  more  than  half  a  mile." 

They  seeped  along  over  the  wet  wood 
road,  speaking  not  at  all,  as  snipers  were 
scattered  by  night  here  and  there  in  the 
trees.  They  came  to  the  old  white  build- 
ing, a  country  house  of  size  and  beauty. 
In  the  cellar,  three  soldiers  were  lying  on 
straw.  Two  of  them  told  Hilda  they 
had  been  lying  wounded  and  uncared 
for  in  the  trenches  since  evening  of  the 
night  before.  They  had  just  been  brought 


124  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

to  the  house.  She  went  over  to  the 
third,  a  boy  of  about  eighteen  years. 
He  was  shot  through  the  biceps  muscle 
of  his  left  arm.  He  was  pale  and 
weak. 

"How  long  have  you  been  like  this?" 
asked  the  girl. 

"Since  four  o'clock,  yesterday,"  he 
whispered. 

"Thirty  hours,"  said  Hilda. 

Dr.  McDonnell  made  a  request  to  the 
officer  for  help.  He  gave  four  men  and 
two  stretchers.  They  put  the  boy  and 
one  of  the  men  on  the  stretchers,  and 
hoisted  them  through  the  cellar  window. 
Woffington  and  McDonnell  took  the 
lantern  and  searched  till  they  found  a 
wheelbarrow.  The  third  man,  wounded 
in  the  shoulder,  threw  an  arm  over  Dr. 
McDonnell,  and  Woffington  steadied  him 
at  the  waist.  He  stumbled  up  the  steps, 
and  collapsed  into  the  barrow. 

Woffington  and  the  Doctor  took  turns 
in  wheeling  him  through  the  mud.  Hilda 


WAR  125 

walked  at  their  side.  The  wheel  bit 
deeply  into  the  road  under  the  weight. 
They  had  to  spell  each  other,  fre- 
quently. After  a  few  hundred  yards, 
they  met  a  small  detachment  of  cavalry, 
advancing  toward  the  house.  The  horses 
seemed  to  feel  the  tension,  and  shared  in 
the  silence  of  their  drivers,  stepping  noise- 
lessly through  the  murk.  Woffington 
was  forced  to  turn  the  barrow  into  the 
ditch.  It  required  the  strength  of  the 
two  men,  one  at  each  handle,  to  shove 
it  out  on  the  road  again. 

The  stretchers  had  reached  the  ambu- 
lance ahead  of  the  wheelbarrow.  They 
loaded  the  car  hastily — there  was  no 
time  to  swing  stretchers.  They  put  the 
three  wounded  in  on  the  long  wooden 
seat.  The  boy  with  the  torn  biceps 
fainted  on  Hilda's  shoulder.  She  rode  in 
with  him.  At  Hoogar  dressing-station, 
she  asked  the  military  doctor  for  water 
for  the  boy.  He  had  come  to,  and  kept 
whispering -- "Water,  water." 


126  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

"I  have  no  water  for  you,"  said  the 
Doctor. 

A  soldier  followed  her  back  to  the  car 
and  gave  the  lad  to  drink  from  his 
bottle.  There  was  only  a  swallow  in  it. 

When  they  reached  the  Convent,  the 
officer  in  charge  came  running  out. 

"I'll  take  this  load,  but  that's  all," 
he  said.  "Can't  take  any  more,  full  up. 
Next  trip,  go  on  into  the  town,  to  Mili- 
tary Hospital  Number  Three." 

They  started  back  toward  the  wood. 

"I've  only  got  petrol  enough  for  one 
trip,  and  then  home  again,"  said 
Woffington. 

"All  the  way,  then,"  said  the  Doctor, 
"out  to  the  farthest  trenches.  We'll 
make  a  clean  sweep." 

They  shot  past  Hoogar,  and  out 
through  the  wood,  and  on  to  the  trenches 
of  the  Cheshires.  Just  back  of  the 
mounded  earth,  the  reserves  were  sleep- 
ing in  the  mud  of  the  road,  and  on  the 
wet  bank  of  the  ditch.  The  night  was 


WAR  127 

dark  and  silent.  A  few  rods  to  the  right, 
a  shelled  barn  was  blazing. 

"Have  you  any  wounded?"  asked  Dr. 
McDonnell. 

"So  many  we  haven't  gathered  them 
in,"  answered  the  officer.  "What  is  the 
use?  No  one  to  carry  them  away." 

"I'll  carry  as  many  as  I  can,"  said  the 
Doctor. 

"I'll  send  for  them,"  replied  the  cap- 
tain. He  spread  his  men  out  in  the 
search.  Three  wounded  were  placed  in 
the  car,  all  of  them  stretcher  cases. 

"Room  for  one  more  stretcher  case," 
said  Dr.  McDonnell;  "the  car  only  holds 
four." 

"Bring  the  woman,"  ordered  the 
officer. 

His  men  came  carrying  an  aged  peas- 
ant woman,  grey-haired,  heavy,  her  black 
dress  soggy  with  dew  and  blood. 

"Here's  a  poor  old  woman,"  explained 
the  captain;  "seems  to  be  a  Belgian 
peasant.  She  was  working  out  in  the 


128  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

fields  here,  while  the  firing  was  going  on. 
She  was  shot  in  the  leg  and  fell  down  in 
the  field.  She's  been  lying  on  her  face 
there  all  day.  Can't  you  take  her  out 
of  the  way?" 

"Surely,"  said  Hilda. 

The  old  woman  was  heavier  than  a 
soldier,  heavier  and  more  helpless. 

"The  car  is  full,"  said  Hilda;  "you 
have  more  wounded?" 

The  officer  smiled. 

"Of  course,"  he  answered;  "here  come 
a  few  of  them,  now." 

The  girl  counted  them.  She  had  to 
leave  twelve  men  at  that  farthest  trench, 
because  the  car  was  full.  On  the  trip 
back,  she  jumped  down  at  the  Hoogar 
dressing-station,  and  there  she  found 
sixteen  more  men  strewed  around  in 
the  straw,  waiting  to  be  removed. 
Twenty-eight  men  she  had  to  ride  away 
from. 

For  the  first  time  in  that  long  day, 
they  went  past  the  Convent-hospital,  and 


WAR  129 

on  into  the  city  of  Ypres  itself,  down 
through  the  Grand  Place,  and  then 
abruptly  through  a  narrow  street  to  the 
south.  Here  they  found  Military  Hos- 
pital Number  Three.  The  wounded  men 
were  lifted  down  and  into  the  courtyard. 
Lastly,  the  woman: 

'Yes,  we'll  take  her,"  said  the  good- 
hearted  Tommies,  who  lent  a  hand  in 
unloading  the  car.  But  their  officer  was 
firm. 

"We  have  no  room,"  he  said;  "we 
must  keep  this  hospital  for  the  soldiers. 
I  wish  I  could  help  you." 

"But  what  am  I  to  do  with  her?" 
asked  Hilda  in  dismay. 

"I  am  sorry,"  said  the  officer.  He 
walked  away. 

"The  same  old  story,"  said  Hilda; 
"no  place  for  the  old  in  war-time. 
They'll  turn  us  away  from  all  the 
hospitals.  Anyone  who  isn't  a  soldier 
might  as  well  be  dead  as  in  trouble." 

The   old   woman   lay   on  the  stretcher 


130  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

in  the  street.  Her  mouth  had  fallen 
open,  as  if  she  had  weakened  her  hold  on 
things.  There  was  something  beyond 
repair  about  her  appearance,  and  some- 
thing unrebuking,  too.  "Do  with  me 
what  you  please,"  she  seemed  to  say, 
"I  shall  make  no  complaint.  I  am  too 
old  and  feeble  to  make  you  any  trouble. 
Leave  me  here  in  the  gutter  if  you 
like.  No  one  will  ever  blame  you  for 
it,  surely  not  I." 

"Lift  her  back,"  ordered  the  Doctor; 
"we'll  go  hunting." 

He  had  seen  a  convent  near  the  mar- 
ket square  when  they  had  gone  through 
in  the  morning.  They  rode  to  the  door, 
and  pulled  the  hanging  wire.  The  bell 
resounded  down  long  corridors.  Five 
minutes  passed.  Then  the  bolt  was  shot, 
and  a  sleepy-eyed  Sister  opened  the  door, 
candle  in  hand. 

"Sister,  I  beg  you  to  take  this  poor 
old  peasant  woman  in  my  car,"  pleaded 
Hilda,  "she  is  wounded  in  the  leg." 


WAR  131 

The  Sister  made  no  reply  but  threw 
the  door  wide  open,  then  turned  and 
shuffled  off  down  the  stone  corridor. 

"Come,"  said  Hilda;  "we  have  found  a 
home." 

The  men  lifted  the  stretcher  out,  and 
followed  the  dim  twinkling  light  down 
the  passage.  It  turned  into  a  great 
room.  They  followed  in.  Every  bed 
was  occupied  —  perhaps  fifty  old  women 
sleeping  there,  grey  hair  and  white  hair 
on  the  pillows,  red  coverlets  over  the 
beds.  To  the  end  of  the  room  they 
went,  where  one  wee  little  girl  was  sleep- 
ing. The  Sister  spread  bedding  on  the 
floor,  and  lifted  the  child  from  the  cot. 
She  stretched  herself  a  moment  in  the 
chilly  sheets,  then  settled  into  sleep,  with 
her  face,  shut-eyed,  upturned  toward 
the  light.  Hilda  sighed  with  relief.  Their 
work  was  ended. 

"Now  for  home,"  she  said.  "Fifteen 
and  a  half  hours  of  work." 

It   was   half   an   hour   after   midnight, 


132  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

when  they  drew  up  in  Ypres  market 
square  and  glanced  down  the  beautiful 
length  of  the  Cloth  Hall,  that  building 
of  massive  and  light-winged  proportion. 
It  was  the  last  time  they  were  ever  to  see 
it.  It  has  fallen  under  the  shelling,  and 
cannot  be  rebuilt.  They  paused  to  pick 
their  road  back  to  Fumes,  for  in  the 
darkness  it  was  hard  to  find  the  street 
that  led  out  of  the  town.  They  thought 
they  had  found  it,  and  went  swiftly 
down  to  the  railway  station  before  they 
knew  their  mistake.  As  they  started 
to  turn  back  and  try  again,  a  great  shell 
fell  into  the  little  artificial  lake  just 
beyond  them.  It  roared  under  the  sur- 
face, and  then  shot  up  a  fountain  of 
water  twenty  feet  high,  with  edges  of 
white  foam. 

"It  is  time  to  go,"  said  Hilda;  "they 
will  send  another  shell.  They  always 
do.  They  are  going  to  bombard  the 
town." 

They  spurted  back  to  the  square,  and 


WAR  133 

as  they  circled  it,   still  puzzled  for  the 

way   of   escape,   two   shells   went   sailing 

• 

high  over  them  and  fell  into  the  town 
beyond. 

"Jack  Johnsons,"  said  Woffington. 
This  time,  he  made  the  right  turn,  back 
of  the  Cloth  Hall  into  the  safe  country. 

Never  had  it  felt  so  good  to  Hilda  to 
leave  a  place. 

"I  am  afraid,"  she  said  to  herself. 
Now  she  knew  why  brave  men  some- 
times ran  like  rabbits. 

"Go  back  to  London,  and  report  what 
we  have  seen,"  urged  Dr.  McDonnell. 
"We  can  set  England  aflame  with  it. 
The  English  people  will  rise  to  it,  if 
they  know  their  wounded  are  being 
neglected." 

"It  takes  a  lot  to  rouse  the  English," 
said  Hilda;  "that  is  their  greatest  qual- 
ity, their  steadiness.  In  our  country 
we'd  have  a  crusade  over  the  situation, 
and  then  we'd  forget  all  about  it.  But 


134  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

you  people  won't  believe  it  for  another 
year  or  so.  When  you  do  believe  it, 
you'll  cure  it." 

"You  will  see,"  replied  the  Doctor. 

"I'll  try,"  said  Hilda. 

It  was  one  of  those  delightful  mixed 
grills  in  Dover  Street,  London,  where 
men  and  women  are  equally  welcome. 
Dover  Street  is  lined  with  them,  pleasant 
refuges  for  the  wives  of  army  officers, 
literary  women  of  distinction,  and  the 
host  of  well-to-do  uncelebrated  persons, 
who  make  the  rich  background  of  mod- 
ern life.  Dr.  McDonnell's  warm  friend, 
the  Earl  of  Tottenham,  and  his  wife, 
were  entertaining  Hilda  at  dinner,  and, 
knowing  she  had  something  to  tell  of 
conditions  at  Ypres,  they  had  made 
Colonel  Albert  Bevan  one  of  the  party. 

Hilda  thought  Colonel  Bevan  one  of 
the  cleverest  men  she  had  ever  met.  He 
had  a  quick  nervous  habit  of  speech,  a 
clean-shaven  alert  face,  with  a  smile  that 


WAR  135 

threw  her  off  guard  and  opened  the  way 
for  the  Colonel  to  make  his  will  prevail. 
He  was  enjoying  a  brilliant  Parliamen- 
tary career.  He  had  early  thrown  his 
lot  with  the  Liberals,  and  had  never 
found  cause  to  regret  it.  He  had  been 
an  under-secretary,  and,  when  the  war 
broke  out,  Kitchener  had  chosen  him 
for  his  private  emissary  to  the  fighting 
line  to  report  back  to  the  Chief  the  exact 
situation.  He  was  under  no  one  else 
than  K.;  came  directly  to  him  with  his 
findings,  went  from  him  to  the  front. 

"My  dear  young  lady,"  the  Colonel 
was  saying,  "you've  forgotten  that  Ypres 
was  the  biggest  fight  of  the  war,  one  of 
the  severest  in  all  history.  In  a  day  or 
two,  we  got  things  in  hand.  You  came 
down  on  a  day  when  the  result  was  just 
balanced.  It  was  a  toss-up  whether  the 
other  fellows  would  come  through  or 
not.  You  see,  you  took  us  at  a  bad 
time." 

"How     about     the     ambulances     that 


136  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

weren't  working?"  asked  Hilda.  "The 
square  was  lined  with  them." 

"I  know,"  responded  the  Colonel, 
"but  the  city  was  likely  to  be  evacuated 
at  any  hour.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  those 
ambulances  were  used  all  night  long  after 
the  bombardment  began,  emptying  the 
three  military  hospitals,  and  taking  the 
men  to  the  train.  We  sent  them  down 
to  Calais.  You  were  most  fortunate  in 
getting  through  the  lines  at  all.  I 
shouldn't  have  blamed  Captain  Fitz- 
gerald if  he  had  ordered  you  back  to 
Fumes." 

"Captain  Fitzgerald!"  exclaimed  Hilda. 
"How  did  you  know  I  was  talking  with 
him?" 

"I  was  there  that  day  in  Ypres,"  said 
the  Colonel. 

"You  were  in  Ypres,"  repeated  Hilda, 
in  astonishment. 

"I  was  there,"  he  said;  "I  saw  the 
whole  thing.  You  came  down  upon  our 
lines  as  if  you  had  fallen  out  of  a  blue 


WAR  137 

moon.  What  were  we  to  do?  A  very 
charming  young  American  lady,  with  a 
very  good  motor  ambulance.  It  was  a 
visitation,  wasn't  it?  If  we  allowed  it 
regularly,  what  would  become  of  the 
fighting?  Why,  there  are  fifty  volunteer 
organizations,  with  cars  and  nurses,  cool- 
ing their  heels  in  Boulogne.  If  we  let 
one  in,  we  should  have  to  let  them  all 
come.  There  wouldn't  be  any  room  for 
troops." 

"But  how  about  the  wounded?" 
queried  Hilda.  "Where  do  they  come  in?" 

"In  many  cases,  it  doesn't  hurt  them 
to  lie  out  in  the  open  air,"  responded  the 
Colonel;  "that  was  proved  in  the  South 
African  Wrar.  The  wounds  often  heal 
if  you  leave  them  alone  in  the  open  air. 
But  you  people  come  along  and  stir  up 
and  joggle  them.  In  army  slang,  we  call 
you  the  body  snatchers." 

"What  you  say  about  the  wounded 
is  absurd,"  replied  Hilda. 

"Tut,  tut,"  chided  the  Colonel. 


138  YOUNG  HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

"I  mean  just  that,"  returned  the  girl, 
with  heat.  "It  is  terrible  to  leave  men 
lying  out  who  have  got  wounded.  It  is 
all  rot  to  say  the  open  air  does  them 
good.  If  the  wound  was  clean  from  a 
bullet,  and  the  air  pure,  and  the  soil 
fresh  as  in  a  new  country,  that  would  be 
true  in  some  of  the  cases.  The  wound 
would  heal  itself.  But  a  lot  of  the 
wounds  are  from  jagged  bits  of  shell, 
driving  pieces  of  clothing  and  mud  from 
the  trenches  into  the  flesh.  The  air  is 
septic,  full  of  disease  from  the  dead  men. 
They  lie  so  close  to  the  surface  that  a 
shell,  anywhere  near,  brings  them  up. 
Three  quarters  of  your  casualties  are 
from  disease.  The  wound  doesn't  heal; 
it  gets  gangrene  and  tetanus  from  the 
stale  old  soil.  And  instead  of  having 
a  good  fighting  man  back  in  trim  in  a 
fortnight,  you  have  a  sick  man  in  a 
London  hospital  for  a  couple  of  months, 
and  a  cripple  for  a  lifetime." 

"You    would    make    a    good    special 


WAR  139 

pleader,"  responded  the  Colonel  with  a 
bow.  "I  applaud  your  spirit,  but  the 
wounded  are  not  so  important,  you 
know.  There  are  other  considerations 
that  come  ahead  of  the  wounded." 

"But  don't  the  wounded  come  first?" 
asked  Hilda,  in  a  hurt  tone. 

"Certainly  not,"  answered  the  Colonel. 
"We  have  to  keep  the  roads  clear  for 
military  necessity.  This  is  the  order  in 
which  we  have  to  regard  the  use  of  roads 
in  war-time."  He  checked  off  his  list 
on  his  fingers  — 

"First  comes  ammunition,  then  food, 
then  reinforcements,  and  fourth,  the 
wounded.' 


IN  RAMSKAPPELE  BARNYARD 

Thirteen  dead  men  were  scattered  about 
in  the  straw  and  dung.  Some  of  them 
were  sitting  in  absurd  postures,  as  if  they 
were  actors  in  a  pantomime.  Others  of 
them,  though  burned  and  shattered,  lay 
peacefully  at  full  length.  No  impress  of 
torture  could  any  longer  rob  them  of  the 
rest  on  which  they  had  entered  so  suddenly. 
I  saw  that  each  one  of  them  had  come  to 
the  end  of  his  quest  and  had  found  the 
thing  for  which  he  had  been  searching. 
The  Frenchman  had  his  equality  now.  The 
German  had  doubtless  by  this  time,  found 
his  God  "a  mighty  fortress."  The  Belgian 
had  won  a  neutrality  which  nothing  would 
ever  invade. 

As  I  looked  on  that  barnyard  of  dead,  I 
was  glad  for  them  that  they  were  dead,  and 
not  as  the  men  I  had  seen  in  the  hospital 
wards  —  the  German  with  his  leg  being 


142  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

sawn  off,  and  the  strange  bloated  face  of 
the  Belgian:  all  those  maimed  and  broken 
men  condemned  to  live  and  carry  on  the 
living  flesh  the  pranks  of  shell  fire.  For 
it  was  surely  better  to  be  torn  to  pieces  and 
to  die  than  to  be  sent  forth  a  jest. 


VI 

THE  CHEVALIER 

'ILDA'S  friends  in  England  had 
prepared  a  "surprise"  for  her. 
It  was  engineered  by  a  wise  and 
energetic  old  lady  in  London,  who  had 
been  charmed  with  the  daring  of  the 
American  girl  at  the  front.  So,  without 
Hilda's  knowledge,  she  published  the 
following  advertisement :  - 

"'HILDA'  —  Will  every  Hilda,  big 
and  little,  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland, 
send  contributions  for  a  'Hilda'  motor 
ambulance,  costing  £500,  to  be  sent  for 
service  in  Pervyse,  to  save  wounded 
Belgian  soldiers  from  suffering?  It  will 
be  run  by  a  nurse  named  Hilda.  '  Lady 
Hildas '  subscribe  a  guinea,  '  Hildas '  over 
sixteen,  half -guinea,  'Little  Hildas',  and 
'Hildas'  in  straightened  circumstances, 
two-shillings-and-sixpence." 


144  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

That  was  the  "Personal"  on  the  front 
page  of  the  London  Times,  which  had 
gone  out  over  the  land. 

Hilda's  life  at  the  front  had  appealed 
to  the  imagination  of  some  thousands 
of  the  Belgian  soldiers,  and  to  many 
officers.  The  fame  of  her  and  of  her  two 
companions  had  grown  with  each  week  of 
the  wearing,  perilous  service,  hard  by  the 
Belgian  trenches.  Gradually  there  had 
drifted  out  of  the  marsh-land  hints  and 
broken  bits  of  the  life-saving  work  of 
these  Pervyse  girls,  all  the  way  back  to 
England.  The  Hildas  of  the  realm  had 
rallied,  and  funds  flowed  into  the  London 
office,  till  a  swift  commodious  car  was 
purchased,,  and  shipped  out  to  the  young 
nurse. 

And  now  Hilda's  car  had  actually  come 
to  her,  there  at  the  dressing-station  in 
Pervyse.  The  brand  new  motor  ambu- 
lance was  standing  in  the  roadway, 
waiting  her  need.  Its  brown  canopy  was 
shiny  in  the  sun.  A  huge  Red  Cross 


THE    CHEVALIER  145 

adorned  either  side  with  a  crimson  splash 
that  ought  to  be  visible  on  a  dark  night. 
The  thirty  horse-power  engine  purred  and 
obeyed  with  the  sympathy  of  a  high- 
strung  horse.  Seats  and  stretchers  inside 
were  clean  and  fresh  for  stricken  men. 
From  Hilda's  own  home  town  of  Cedar 
Rapids,  Iowa,  had  come  a  friendship's 
garland  of  one  hundred  dollars.  She 
liked  to  fancy  that  this  particular  sum  of 
money  had  passed  into  the  front  wheels, 
where  the  speed  was  generated. 

"My  car,  my  very  own,"  she  mur- 
mured. She  dreamed  about  it,  and 
carried  it  in  her  thoughts  by  day. 
She  had  fine  rushes  of  feeling  about  it, 
too.  It  must  do  worthy  work,  she 
said  to  herself.  There  could  be  no 
retreating  from  bad  pockets  with  that 
car.  There  must  be  no  leaving  the 
wounded,  when  the  firing  cuts  close,  no 
joy-riding. 

She  could  not  help  feeling  proud  of 
her  position.  There  was  no  other  woman 


146  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

out  of  all  America  who  had  won  through 
to  the  front.  And  on  all  the  Western 
battle-line  of  four  hundred  miles,  there 
were  no  other  women,  save  her  and  her 
two  friends,  who  were  doing  just  this 
sort  of  dangerous  touch-and-go  work. 
With  her  own  eyes  she  had  read  the 
letters  of  more  than  two  hundred  persons, 
begging  permission  to  join  the  Corps. 
There  were  women  of  title,  professional 
men  of  standing.  What  had  she  done 
to  deserve  such  lucky  eminence?  Why 
was  she  chosen  to  serve  at  the  furthest 
outpost  where  risk  and  opportunity  went 
hand  in  hand? 

Dr.  Neil  McDonnell,  leader  of  the 
Ambulance  Corps,  had  brought  a  party 
of  her  friends  from  Fumes,  to  cele- 
brate the  coming  of  the  car.  Dr. 
McDonnell  was  delighted  with  every 
success  achieved  by  his  "children."  When 
the  three  women  went  to  Pervyse,  and 
the  fame  of  them  spread  through  the 
Belgian  Army,  the  Doctor  was  as  happy 


THE    CHEVALIER  147 

as  if  a  grandchild  had  won  the  Derby. 
He  was  glad  when  Mrs.  Bracher  and 
"Scotch"  received  the  purple  ribbon  and 
the  starry  silver  medal  for  faithful  service 
in  a  parlous  place.  He  was  now  very 
happy  that  Hilda's  fame  had  sprung  to 
England,  taken  root,  and  bloomed  in  so 
choice  a  way.  He  had  a  curiously  sweet 
nature,  the  Doctor,  a  nature  without 
animosities,  absent-minded,  filmed  with 
dreams,  and  those  dreams  large,  bold  and 
kindly. 

"Your  car  is  better  than  a  medal," 
he  said;  "a  medal  can't  save  life,  but  this 
car  will.  This  is  as  good  as  an  endowed 
hospital  bed.  It's  like  the  King's  touch; 
it  heals  everyone  who  comes  near.  May 
its  shadow  never  grow  less." 

"I  hope  they  won't  shoot  away  its 
bonnet,"  said  Hilda;  "there's  nothing 
so  dead-looking  as  a  wrecked  ambulance. 
I  saw  one  the  other  day  on  the  Oest- 
kirke  road.  It  looked  like  a  summer- 
resort  place  in  winter." 


148  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"No  danger,"  replied  the  Doctor,  who 
was  of  a  buoyant  cast;  "you  are  born 
lucky.  You're  one  of  the  Fortunate  Seven. 
You  know  there  are  Seven  Fortunate 
born  in  each  generation.  All  the  good 
things  come  to  them  without  striving. 
You  are  one  of  the  Fortunate  Seven." 

"We  shall  see,"  responded  Hilda. 

The  Doctor  was  just  starting  back  to 
Fumes,  when  he  remembered  what  he 
had  come  for. 

"By  the  way,"  he  called  to  Hilda, 
"what  driver  do  you  want?" 

"Smith,  of  course,"  she  answered. 
"Whom  could  I  want  but  Smith?  He  is 
quite  the  bravest  man  I  have  met  in  the 
twenty  weeks  out  here." 

"He's  only  a  chauffeur,"  remarked  one 
of  the  Corps. 

"Only  a  chauffeur,"  echoed  Hilda; 
"only  the  man  who  runs  the  car  and 
picks  up  the  wounded,  and  straps  in 
the  stretchers.  Give  me  Smith,  every 
time — "  she  ended. 


THE    CHEVALIER  149 

"He  looks  like  a  hero,  doesn't  he?" 
said  the  same  member  of  the  Corps. 

"No,  he  doesn't,"  laughed  Hilda, 
"and  that's  the  joke." 

Smith  reported  for  duty  early  next 
morning. 

"We  must  christen  the  car  in  some 
real  way,"  she  said.  "How  shall  it  be, 
Smith?" 

"  Dixmude,"  he  answered.  He  generally 
dealt  in  replies  of  one  word.  He  was  a 
city  lad,  slight  in  frame,  of  pale,  tired  face. 

"Yes,  there  is  always  work  at  Dix- 
mude," Hilda  agreed. 

They  started  on  the  six-mile  run. 

"What  do  you  think  of  using  black 
troops  against  white,  miss?"  asked  Smith, 
after  they  had  bowled  along  for  a  few 
minutes. 

"I'm  not  a  warlike  person,"  replied 
Hilda,  "so  I  don't  know  what's  the 
proper  thing.  But,  just  the  same,  I 
don't  like  to  see  them  using  black  men. 


150  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

They  don't  know  what  they're  fighting 
about.  Anyway,  I'd  rather  help  them, 
than  shoot  them." 

"It  isn't  their  fault,  is  it,  miss?"  said 
Smith. 

"By  no  means,"  returned  Hilda;  "they 
deserve  all  the  more  help  because  they 
are  ignorant." 

"That's  right  enough,  too,"  agreed 
Smith  and  relapsed  into  his  constitutional 
silence.  He  had  a  quiet  way  with  him, 
which  was  particularly  agreeable  when 
the  outer  air  was  tense. 

They  rode  on  into  Dixmude.  The 
little  city  had  been  torn  into  shreds,  as  a 
sail  is  torn  by  a  hurricane.  But  the 
ruined  place  was  still  treated  from  time 
to  time  with  shell  fire,  lest  any  troops 
should  make  the  charred  wreckage  a 
cover  for  advancing  toward  the  enemy 
trenches.  They  rode  on  to  where  they 
caught  a  flash  of  soldiers'  uniform. 

In  a  blackened  butt  of  an  inn,  a  group 
of  Senegalese  were  hiding.  They  were 


THE    CHEVALIER  151 

great  six-foot  fellows,  with  straight 
bodies,  and  shoulders  for  carrying  weights 
—  the  face  a  black  mask,  expressionless, 
save  for  the  rolling  whites  of  the  eyes, 
and  the  sudden  startling  grin  of  perfect 
white  teeth,  when  trouble  fell  out  of  the 
sky.  They  had  been  left  there  to  hold  the 
furthest  outpost.  A  dozen  of  them  were 
hale  and  cheery.  Two  of  them  sat  pa- 
tiently in  the  straw,  nursing  each  a 
damaged  arm.  Out  in  the  gutter,  fifty 
feet  away,  one  sat  picking  at  his  left 
leg.  Smith  turned  the  car,  half  around, 
then  backed  it  toward  the  ditch,  then 
forward  again,  and  so  around,  till  at 
last  he  had  it  headed  back  a«long  the 
road  they  had  come.  Then  he  brought 
it  to  a  standstill,  leaving  the  power  on, 
so  that  the  frame  of  the  car  shook,  as 
the  body  of  a  hunting  dog  shakes  before 
it  is  let  loose  from  the  leash. 

There  was  a  wail  in  the  air  overhead, 
a  wail  and  then  a  roar,  as  a  shell 
cut  close  over  the  hood  of  the  ambu- 


152  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

lance  and  exploded  in  the  low  wall  of 
the  house  opposite.  Three  more  came 
more  quickly  than  one  could  count 
aloud. 

"Four;  a  battery  of  four,"  said  Hilda. 

The  enemy  artillery  had  sighted  their 
ambulance,  and  believing  it  to  contain 
reinforcements  or  ammunition,  were  level- 
ing their  destruction  at  it.  The  high 
car  with  its  brown  canvas  covering  was  a 
fair  mark  in  the  clear  morning  light. 
Hilda  motioned  the  two  wounded  men 
in  the  inn  to  come  to  the  car.  They 
slowly  rose  to  their  feet,  and  patiently 
trudged  out  into  the  road.  Smith  gave 
them  a  hand,  and  they  climbed  upon  the 
footboard  of  the  ambulance,  and  over 
into  the  interior.  One  of  the  black  men 
called  harshly  to  the  man  in  the  ditch 
down  the  road.  He  turned  from  his  sit- 
ting posture,  fell  over  on  his  face,  and 
then  came  crawling  on  his  hands  and 
knees. 

"Why  doesn't  he  walk?"  asked  Hilda. 


THE    CHEVALIER  153 

"Foot  shot  away,"  replied  Smith. 

She  saw  the  raw,  red  flesh  of  the  lower 
leg,  as  if  the  work  of  his  maker  had  been 
left  incompleted.  Again  in  the  air  there 
was  the  moan  of  travelling  metal,  then 
the  heavy  thud  of  its  impact,  the  roar 
as  it  released  its  explosive,  and  the 
shower  of  brick  dust,  iron  and  pebbles. 
Again,  the  following  three,  sharp  and 
close,  one  on  the  track  of  the  other. 

"  They've  got  our  range  all  right,"  said 
Smith. 

The  black  man,  trailing  his  left  leg, 
seemed  slow  in  coming,  as  he  scratched 
along  over  the  ground.  This  is  surely 
death,  Hilda  said  to  herself,  and  she 
felt  it  would  be  good  to  die  just  so. 
She  had  not  been  a  very  sinful  person, 
but  she  well  knew  there  had  been  much 
in  her  way  of  doing  things  to  be  sorry 
for.  She  had  spoken  harshly,  and  acted 
cruelly.  She  had  brought  suffering  to 
other  lives  with  her  charm.  And,  sud- 
denly in  this  flash  of  clear  seeing,  she 


154  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

knew  that  by  this  single  act  of  standing 
there,  waiting,  she  had  wiped  out  the 
wrong-doing,  and  found  forgiveness.  She 
knew  she  could  face  the  dark  as  blithely 
as  if  she  were  going  to  her  bridal. 
Strange  how  the  images  of  an  old- 
fashioned  and  outgrown  religion  came 
back  upon  her  in  this  instant.  Strange 
that  she  should  feel  this  act  was  bring- 
ing her  an  atonement  and  that  she 
could  meet  death  without  a  tremor.  The 
gods  beyond  this  gloom  were  going  to 
be  good  to  her,  she  knew  it.  They  would 
salute  Smith  and  herself,  as  comrades 
unafraid. 

She  was  glad,  too,  that  her  last  sight 
of  things  would  be  the  look  at  the 
homely  face  of  Smith,  as  he  stood  there 
at  his  full  height,  which  was  always  a 
little  bent,  very  much  untroubled  by 
the  passing  menace.  She  did  not  know 
that  there  was  anyone  with  whom  she 
would  rather  go  down  than  with  the 
ignorant  boy,  who  was  holding  his  life 


THE    CHEVALIER  155 

cheap  for  a  crippled  black  man.  Some- 
how, being  with  him  in  this  hour,  con- 
nected her  with  the  past  of  her  own  life, 
for,  after  her  fashion,  she  had  tried  to  be 
true  to  her  idea  of  equality.  She  had 
always  felt  that  such  as  he  were  worthy 
of  the  highest  things  in  life.  And  there 
he  stood,  proving  it.  That  there  was 
nobody  beside  herself  to  see  him,  struck 
her  as  just  a  part  of  the  general  injustice. 
If  he  had  been  a  great  captain,  doing 
this  thing,  he  would  go  down  a  memory 
to  many.  Being  an  unknown  lad  of  the 
lower  class,  he  would  be  as  little  recog- 
nized in  his  death  as  in  life.  It  was 
strange  what  racing  and  comprehensive 
work  her  brain  compassed  in  a  little 
moment.  It  painted  by  flashes  and 
crowded  its  canvas  with  the  figures  of 
a  life-time.  Only  those  who  have  not 
lived  such  a  moment,  doubt  this. 

Then  came  two  more  shells,  this  time 
just  in  front  of  the  car  and  low.  And 
now  the  negro,  creeping  along,  had 


156   YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

reached  the  car.  Smith  and  Hilda  lifted 
him  in,  and  waved  good-bye  to  the  black 
men  flattened  against  the  wall  of  the  inn. 
Smith  put  on  power,  and  they  raced  to 
the  turn  of  the  road. 

There  at  the  cross-roads,  on  horse- 
back, was  Hilda's  faithful  and  gallant 
friend,  Commandant  Jost,  friend  of  the 
King's.  He  was  using  his  field-glasses 
on  the  road  down  which  they  had  sped. 

"C'est  chaud,"  called  Hilda  to  her  old 
friend,  "it  was  lively." 

'Yes,"  he  answered  soberly.  "I  just 
came  up  in  time  to  see  you.  I  didn't 
know  it  was  you.  I  have  been  watching 
your  car  with  my  glasses.  They  nearly 
hit  you.  I  counted  ten  reports  into  the 
street  where  you  were." 

"Yes,"  returned  Hilda,  "but- all's  well 
that  ends  well." 

"How  many  men  did  you  rescue?" 
asked  the  Commandant. 

"Three,"  answered  the  girl;  "the  last 
fellow  came  slowly.  His  foot  was  bad." 


THE    CHEVALIER  157 

The  Commandant  dismounted  and 
came  round  to  the  back  of  the  car.  He 
threw  up  the  hood. 

'You  did  this  for  black  men?"  he  said 
slowly. 

"Why  not?"  asked  Hilda  in  surprise. 
"If  they're  good  enough  to  fight  for  us, 
they're  good  enough  to  save." 

"The  King  shall  know  of  this,"  he 
said;  "it  means  a  decoration.  I  will  see 
to  it." 

Hilda's  face  lighted  up  for  an  instant. 
Then  the  glow  died  down;  she  became 
grave. 

"If  anything  comes  of  this,"  she  said 
simply,  "it  goes  to  Smith.  I  must 
insist  on  that." 

'There  is  just  one  thing  about  it," 
replied  the  Commandant.  "We  cannot 
give  our  decorations  around  wholesale. 
The  King  wishes  to  keep  them  choice 
by  keeping  them  rare.  Now  it  really 
will  not  do  to  add  two  more  decorations 
to  your  little  group.  Two  of  your 


158  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

women  have  already  received  them.  This 
was  a  brave  piece  of  work  —  one  of  the 
bravest  I  ever  saw.  It  deserves  a  ribbon. 
It  shall  have  a  ribbon,  if  I  can  reach  the 
King.  But  two  ribbons,  no.  It  cannot 
be." 

"Ah,  you  don't  need  to  tell  me  that," 
returned  Hilda.  "I  know  that.  One 
decoration  is  quite  enough.  But  that 
decoration,  if  granted,  must  go  to 
Smith." 

The  highest  honor  in  the  gift  of  the 
King  of  the  Belgians  was  being  con- 
ferred: a  Red  Cross  worker  was  about 
to  be  made  Chevalier  of  the  Order  of 
Leopold.  Doubtless  one  would  rather 
be  decorated  by  Albert  than  by  any 
other  person  in  the  world.  It  was  plain 
already  that  he  was  going  down  into 
history  as  one  of  the  fabulous  good 
rulers,  with  Alfred  and  Saint  Louis,  who 
had  been  as  noble  in  their  secret  heart 
as  in  their  pride  of  place.  It  was  fitting 


THE    CHEVALIER  159 

that  the  brief  ceremony  should  be  held 
in  Albert's  wrecked  village  of  Pervyse, 
with  shell  pits  in  the  road,  and  black 
stumps  of  ruin  for  every  glance  of  the 
eye.  For  he  was  no  King  of  prosperity, 
fat  with  the  pomp  of  power.  He  was  a 
man  of  sorrows,  the  brother  of  his  cruci- 
fied people. 

But  the  man  who  was  about  to  be 
honored  kept  getting  lost.  The  dis- 
tinguished statesmen,  officers,  and  visit- 
ing English,  formed  their  group  and 
chatted.  But  the  object  of  their  coming 
together  was  seldom  in  sight.  He 
disappeared  indoors  to  feed  the  wasted 
cat  that  had  lived  through  three  bom- 
bardments and  sought  her  meat  in 
wrecked  homes.  He  was  blotted  out  by 
the  "Hilda"  car,  as  he  tinkered  with  its 
intimacies.  No  man  ever  looked  less  like 
a  Chevalier,  than  Smith,  when  discovered 
and  conducted  to  the  King.  Any  of 
the  little  naval  boy  officers  standing 
around  with  their  gold  braid  on  the 


160  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE  WARS 

purple  cloth,  looked  gaudier  than  Smith. 
He  looked  more  like  a  background,  with 
his  weather-worn  khaki,  and  narrow, 
high-hitched  shoulders,  than  like  the 
center-piece  in  a  public  performance. 

There  came  a  brief  and  painful  mo- 
ment, when  the  King's  favor  was  pinned 
upon  him. 

"The  show  is  over,  isn't  it?"  he  asked. 

Hilda  smiled. 

"I  suppose  you'll  go  and  bury  the 
medal  in  an  old  trunk  in  the  attic,"  she 
said. 

Smith  walked  across  to  the  car,  and 
opened  the  bonnet.  The  group  of  dis- 
tinguished people  had  lost  interest  in 
him.  Hilda  followed  him  over. 

;' You're  most  as  proud  of  that  car 
as  I  am,"  she  said;  "it's  sort  of  your 
car,  too,  isn't  it?" 

Smith  was  burrowing  into  the  interior 
of  things,  and  had  already  succeeded 
in  smearing  his  fingers  with  grease  within 
three  minutes  of  becoming  a  Chevalier. 


THE    CHEVALIER  161 

"Fact  is,  ma'am,"  he  answered,  "it 
is  my  car,  in  a  way.  You  see,  my 
mother's  name  is  Hilda,  same  as  yours. 
My  mother,  she  gave  half-a-crown  for 
it." 


WITH   THE  AMBULANCE 

We  were  carrying  a  dead  man  among  the 
living. 

"  Take  him  out  and  leave  him"  ordered 
our  officer;  "it  is  bad  for  the  wounded  men 
riding  next  to  him  and  under  him" 

We  lifted  him  down  from  his  swinging 
perch  in  the  car.  He  was  heavy  at  the 
shoulders  to  shift.  The  dead  seem  heavier 
than  the  quick.  We  stretched  him  at  full 
length  in  the  sticky  mud  of  the  gutter  at  the 
side  of  the  road.  He  lay  there,  white  face 
and  wide  eyes  in  the  night,  as  if  frozen  in  his 
pain.  Soldiers,  stumbling  to  their  supper, 
brushed  against  his  stiff  body  and  then 
swerved  when  they  saw  the  thing  which  they 
had  touched.  A  group  of  doctors  and  officers 
moved  away.  Mud  from  the  sloughing  tires 
of  the  transports  spattered  him,  but  not  enough 
to  cover  him.  No  one  had  time  to  give  him 
his  resting-place.  We  were  too  busy  with 


164  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

the  fresher  shambles,  and  their  incompleted 
products,  to  pause  for  a  piece  of  work  so 
finished  as  that  cold  corpse. 

But  no  indignity  of  the  roadway  can  long 
withold  him  from  his  portion  of  peace,  and 
the  land  that  awakened  his  courage  will  re- 
ceive him  at  last.  There  is  more  companion- 
ship under  the  ground  than  above  it  for  one 
who  has  been  gallant  against  odds. 


VII 
THE  AMERICAN 

n\  TROCITIES,  rubbish!"  said  the 
man.  "A  few  drunken  soldiers, 
yes.  Every  war  has  had  them. 
But  that's  nothing.  They're  all  a  bunch 
of  crazy  children,  both  sides,  and  pretty 
soon  they'll  quiet  down.  In  the  mean- 
time," he  added  with  a  smile,  "we  take 
the  profits  —  some  of  us,  that  is." 

"Is  that  all  the  war  means  to  you?" 
asked  Hilda. 

"Yes,  and  to  any  sensible  person," 
replied  he.  "Why  do  you  want  to  go 
and  get  yourself  mixed  up  in  it?  An 
American  belongs  out  of  it.  Go  and 
work  in  a  settlement  at  home  and  let 
the  foreign  countries  stew  in  their  own 
juice." 

"Belgium  doesn't  seem  like  a  foreign 
country  to  me,"  returned  the  girl.  'You 


166  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

see,  I  know  the  people.  I  know  young 
Lieutenant  Robert  de  Broqueville  and 
Commandant  Gilson,  with  the  wound 
on  his  face,  and  the  boys  that  come  into 
the  Flandria  Hospital  with  their  fingers 
shot  away.  They  are  like  members  of  my 
family.  They  did  something  for  me.'* 

"How  do  you  make  that  out?" 

The  girl  was  silent  for  a  moment, 
then  she  answered: 

"They  stood  up  for  what  was  a  mat- 
ter of  honor.  They  made  a  fight  against 
odds.  They  could  have  sold  out  easy 
enough." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  man, 
stretching  his  arms  and  yawning. 

"No,  that's  just  the  trouble  with  men 
like  you.  You  don't  know,  and  you 
don't  care  to  know.  You're  all  alike; 
you  stand  aloof  or  amused.  A  great 
human  wrong  has  taken  place,  and  you 
say,  'Well,  I  don't  know!'" 

"Just  a  moment,"  interrupted  the 
man. 


THE    AMERICAN  167 

"But  I  haven't  finished,"  went  on  the 
girl;  "there's  another  thing  I  want  to 
say.  When  Belgium  made  her  fight, 
she  suffered  horrible  things.  Her  women 
and  children  were  mutilated  on  system, 
as  part  of  a  cold  policy.  Cruelty  to  the 
unoffending,  that  is  what  I  mean  by 
atrocities." 

"I  don't  believe  you,"  retorted  the 
man. 

"Come  and  see." 

Hilda,  who  had  run  across  from  Ghent 
to  London  to  stock  up  on  supplies  for 
the  Corps,  was  talking  with  John  Hinch- 
cliffe,  American  banker,  broker,  finan- 
cier. He  was  an  old-time  friend  of 
Hilda's  family  —  a  young  widower,  in 
that  successful  period  of  early  middle- 
age  when  the  hard  work  and  the  dirty 
work  have  availed  and  the  momentum 
of  the  career  maintains  itself.  In  the 
prematurely  gray  hair,  the  good-looking 
face,  the  abrupt  speech,  he  was  very 
much  American.  He  was  neat  —  neat 


in  his  way  of  dressing,  and  in  his  com- 
pact phrases,  as  hard  and  well-rounded 
as  a  pebble.  The  world  to  him  was  a 
place  full  of  slackers,  of  lazy  good- 
nature, of  inefficiency.  Into  that  soft- 
ness he  had  come  with  a  high  explosive 
and  an  aim.  He  moved  through  life  as 
a  hunter  among  a  covey  of  tame  par- 
tridges —  a  brief  flutter  and  a  tumble 
of  soft  flesh.  He  had  the  cunning  lines 
about  the  mouth,  the  glint  in  the  eye, 
of  the  successful  man.  He  had  the  easy 
generosities,  too,  of  the  man  who,  posses- 
sing much,  can  express  power  by  endow- 
ing helpless  things  which  he  happens  to 
like.  There  was  an  abundant  sentiment 
in  him,  sentiment  about  his  daughter  and 
his  flag,  and  the  economic  glory  of  his 
times.  He  was  rather  proud  of  that 
soft  spot  in  his  make-up.  When  men 
spoke  of  him  as  hard,  he  smiled  to  him- 
self, for  there  in  his  consciousness  was 
that  streak  of  emotional  richness.  If  he 
were  attacked  for  raiding  a  trolley  sys- 


THE    AMERICAN  169 

tern,  he  felt  that  his  intimates  would 
declare,  'You  don't  know  him.  Why 
John  is  a  King." 

And,  best  of  all,  he  had  a  kind  of  dim 
vision  of  how  his  little  daughter  would 
come  forward  at  the  Day  of  Judgment, 
if  there  was  anything  of  the  sort,  and 
say,  "He  was  the  best  father  in  the 
world." 

Hilda  and  the  banker  sat  quietly,  each 
busy  in  thought  with  what  had  been  said. 
Then  the  girl  returned  to  her  plea. 

"Come  now,  Mr.  Hinchcliffe,"  she  said, 
"you've  challenged  every  statement  I've 
made,  and  yet  you've  never  once  been 
on  the  ground.  I  am  living  there,  work- 
ing each  day,  wrhere  things  are  happen- 
ing. Now,  why  don't  you  come  and  see 
for  yourself?  It  would  do  you  a  lot  of 
good." 

"I'm  over  here  on  business,"  objected 
the  banker. 

"Perfect  reply  of  a  true  American," 
retorted  Hilda,  hotly.  "Here  are  three 


170  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

or  four  nations  fighting  for  your  future, 
saving  values  for  your  own  sons  and 
grandsons.  And  you're  too  busy  to  in- 
form yourself  as  to  the  rights  of  it. 
You  prefer  to  sit  on  the  fence  and  pluck 
the  profits.  You  would  just  as  lief  sell 
to  the  Germans  as  to  the  Allies,  if  the 
money  lay  that  way  and  no  risk." 

"Sure.  I  did,  in  September,"  said 
the  banker,  with  a  grin;  "shipped  'em 
in  by  way  of  Holland." 

"Yes,"  said  Hilda,  angrily,  "and  it 
was  dirty  money  you  made." 

"What  would  you  have  us  do?"  asked 
he.  "We're  not  in  business  for  our 
health." 

"I  tell  you  what  I'd  have  you  do," 
returned  Hilda.  "I'd  have  you  find  out 
which  side  was  in  the  right  in  the  biggest 
struggle  of  the  ages.  If  necessary,  I'd 
have  you  take  as  much  time  to  inform- 
ing yourself  as  you'd  give  to  learning 
about  a  railroad  stock  which  you  were 
going  to  buy.  Here's  the  biggest  thing 


THE    AMERICAN  171 

that  ever  was,  right  in  front  of  you,  and 
you  don't  even  know  which  side  is  right. 
You  can't  spare  three  days  to  find  out 
whether  a  nation  of  people  is  being 
done  to  death." 

"What  next?"  asked  the  banker  with 
a  smile.  "When  I  have  informed  my- 
self, what  then?  Go  and  sell  all  that  I 
have  and  give  to  the  poor?" 

"No,  I  don't  ask  you  to  come  up  to 
the  level  of  the  Belgians,"  answered 
Hilda,  "or  of  the  London  street  boys. 
But  what  can  be  asked  even  of  a  New 
York  banker  is  that  he  shall  sell  to  the 
side  that  is  in  the  right.  And  when  he 
does  it,  that  he  shall  not  make  excessive 
profits." 

"Run  business  by  the  Golden  Rule?" 

"No,  not  that,  but  just  catch  a  little 
of  the  same  spirit  that  is  being  shown 
by  millions  of  the  common  people  over 
there.  Human  nature  isn't  hah*  as  self- 
ish and  cowardly  as  men  like  you  make 
out.  You'll  burn  your  fingers  if  you 


172  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

try  to  put  a  tag  on  these  peasants  and 
shop-assistants  and  clerks,  over  here. 
They're  not  afraid  to  die.  The  modern 
man  is  all  right,  but  you  fellows  at  the 
top  don't  give  him  half  a  chance.  A 
whole  race  of  peasants  can  be  burned 
out  and  mutilated,  and  it  doesn't  cause 
a  flutter  in  the  pulse-beat  of  one  of  you 
American  traders." 

"You're  a  damn  poor  American,"  said 
the  banker  bluntly. 

'You're  the  poor  American,"  replied 
Hilda.  "An  uncle  of  mine,  with  a  few 
'greats'  in  front  of  him,  was  one  of  the 
three  to  sign  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence for  Connecticut.  Another  of 
us  was  in  Lincoln's  Cabinet.  My  people 
have  helped  to  make  our  country.  We 
were  the  ones  that  welcomed  Louis 
Kossuth,  and  Garibaldi.  We  are  Ameri- 
cans. It's  men  like  you  that  have  weak- 
ened the  strain  —  you  and  your  clever 
tricks  and  your  unbelief.  You  believe 
in  nothing  but  success.  'Money  is 


THE    AMERICAN  173 

power,'  say  you.  It  is  you  that  don't 
believe  in  America,  not  I." 

"What  does  it  all  come  to?"  he  broke 
in  harshly.  "What  is  it  all  about? 
You  talk  heatedly  but  what  are  you 
saying?  I  have  given  money  to  the 
Relief  Work.  I've  done  something,  I've 
got  results.  Where  would  you  have  been 
without  money?" 

"Money!"  said  Hilda.  "A  thousandth 
part  of  your  makings.  And  these  people 
are  giving  their  life!  Why,  once  or 
twice  a  day,  they  are  putting  themselves 
between  wounded  men  and  shell  fire. 
You  talk  about  results.  There  are  more 
results  in  pulling  one  Belgian  out  of  the 
bloody  dust  than  in  your  lifetime  of 
shaving  the  market." 

The  color  came  into  his  face  with  a  rush. 
He  was  so  used  to  expressing  power,  sit- 
ting silent  and  a  little  grim,  and  moving 
weaker  men  to  his  will,  that  it  was  a 
new  experience  to  be  talked  to  by  a 
person  who  quite  visibly  had  vital  force. 


174  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"I  used  to  be  afraid  of  people  like  you," 
she  went  on.  "But  you  don't  look  half 
as  big  to  me  now  as  one  of  these  young 
chauffeurs  who  take  in  the  wounded 
under  shrapnel.  You've  come  to  regard 
your  directive  ability  as  something  sacred. 
You  think  you  can  sit  in  moral  judg- 
ment on  these  people  over  here  —  these 
boys  that  are  flinging  away  their  lives 
for  the  future.  Come  with  me  to  Bel- 
gium, and  find  out  what  they're  really 
fighting  about." 

Hinchcliffe  was  used  to  swift  decisions. 

'Til  do  it,"  he  said. 

Hilda  took  him  straight  to  Ghent. 
Then  she  pushed  her  inquiries  out 
among  her  Belgian  friends.  The  day 
before,  there  had  been  a  savage  fight  at 
Alost. 

"You  will  find  what  you  want  in 
Wetteren  Hospital,"  suggested  Monsieur 
Caron,  Secretary  of  the  Ghent  Red  Cross, 
to  Hilda. 


THE    AMERICAN  175 

"  To-morrow,  we  will  go  there,"  she 
said. 

That  first  evening,  she  led  Hinchcliffe 
through  Ghent.  In  her  weeks  of  work 
there,  she  had  come  to  love  the  beautiful 
old  town.  It  was  strangely  unlike  her 
home  cities --the  brisk  prairie  "parlor 
city,"  where  she  had  grown  up  inch  by 
inch,  as  it  extended  itself  acre  by  acre, 
and  the  mad  modern  city  where  she  had 
struggled  for  her  bread.  The  tide  of 
slaughter  was  still  to  the  east:  a  low 
rumble,  like  surf  on  a  far-away  beach. 
Sometimes  it  came  whinnying  and  licking 
at  the  very  doorstep,  and  then  ebbed 
back,  but  never  rolled  up  on  the  ancient 
city.  It  was  only  an  under-hum  to 
merriment.  It  sharpened  the  nerve  of 
response  to  whatever  passing  excellence 
there  was  in  the  old  streets  and  vivid 
gardens.  Modern  cities  are  portions  of  a 
world  in  the  making.  But  Ghent  was  a 
completed  and  placid  thing,  as  fair  as 
men  could  fashion  it. 


176  YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS 

As  evening  fell,  they  two  leaned  on 
St.  Michel's  bridge  of  the  River  Lys. 
Just  under  the  loiterers,  canals  that 
wound  their  way  from  inland  cities  to 
the  sea  were  dark  and  noiseless,  as  if 
sleep  held  them.  The  blunt-nosed  boats 
of  wide  girth  that  trafficked  down  those 
calm  reaches  were  as  motionless  as  the 
waters  that  floated  them.  Out  of  the 
upper  air,  bells  from  high  towers  dropped 
their  carillon  on  a  population  making  its 
peace  with  the  ended  day.  Cathedral 
and  churches  and  belfry  were  massed 
against  the  night,  cutting  it  with  their 
pinnacles  till  they  entered  the  region  of 
the  early  stars  and  the  climbing  moon. 

Then,  when  that  trance  of  peace  had 
given  them  the  light  sadness  which  ful- 
filled beauty  brings,  they  found  it  good 
to  hasten  down  the  deserted  street  to 
the  cafes  and  thronging  friendly  people. 
They  knew  how  to  live  and  take  their 
pleasure,  those  people  of  Ghent.  No 
sullen  silence  and  hasty  gorging  for  them. 


THE   AMERICAN  177 

They  practised  a  leisurely  dining  and 
an  eager  talk,  a  zest  in  the  flying 
moment.  Their  streets  were  blocked  to 
the  curb  with  little  round  occupied  tables. 
Inner  rooms  were  bright  with  lights  and 
friendly  with  voices.  From  the  silver 
strainer  of  the  "filtered  coffee"  the  hot 
drops  fell  through  to  the  glass,  one  by 
one,  black  and  potent.  Good  coffee, 
and  a  gay  race. 

But  those  lively  people  knew  in  their 
hearts  that  a  .doom  was  on  its  way,  so 
their  evenings  had  the  merit  of  a  vanish- 
ing pleasure,  a  benefit  not  to  be  renewed 
with  the  seasons.  Time  for  the  people 
of  Ghent  carried  the  grace  of  last  days, 
when  everything  that  is  pleasant  and 
care-free  is  almost  over,  and  every  greet- 
ing of  a  comrade  is  touched  with  Vale. 
It  is  the  little  things  that  are  to  be  lost, 
so  to  the  little  things  the  time  remaining 
is  given.  It  is  then  one  learns  that  little 
things  are  the  dearest,  the  light-hearted 
supper  in  the  pleasant  cafe  with  the 


178  YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS 

friend  whose  talk  satisfies,  the  walk  down 
street  past  familiar  windows,  the  look  of 
roofs  and  steeples  dim  in  the  evening 
light. 

"It's  different,  isn't  it?"  said  the 
banker  thoughtfully. 

"Yes,"  agreed  Hilda;  "it  isn't  much 
like  Chicago." 

"Think  of  destroying  places  like  this!" 
went  on  Hinchcliffe.  "Why,  they  can't 
rebuild  them." 

"No,"  laughed  Hilda;  "this  sort  of 
ancestral  thing  isn't  quite  in  our  line." 

"How  foolish  of  them  to  go  to  war!" 
continued  the  banker.  When  his  mind 
once  gripped  an  idea,  it  carried  it  through 
to  the  terminal  station.  Hilda  turned 
on  him  vigorously. 

;'You  realize,  don't  you,"  she  said, 
"that  Belgium  didn't  bring  on  this  war? 
You  remember  that  it  was  some  one  else 
that  came  pouncing  down  upon  her.  It 
seems  almost  a  pity,  doesn't  it,  to  smash 
this  beauty  and  hunt  these  nice  people?" 


THE    AMERICAN  179 

"It's  all  wrong,"  he  said;  "it's  all 
wrong." 

Wetteren  Hospital  —  brick  walls  and 
stone  floors,  the  clatter  of  wooden  shoes 
in  the  outer  corridor,  where  peasants 
shuffled.  In  two  inner  rooms,  where 
eleven  cots  stood,  there  was  a  hush,  for 
there  lay  the  grievously  wounded.  Eleven 
peasants  they  were,  men,  women,  and  a 
child.  A  priest  was  ministering  cheer 
to  them,  bed  by  bed.  Four  Sisters  were 
busy  and  noiseless  in  service.  The  priest 
led  Hilda  and  Hinchcliffe  to  the  cot  of 
one  of  the  men.  The  peasant's  face  was 
pallid,  and  the  cheeks  sunken  from  loss 
of  blood.  The  priest  addressed  him  in 
Flemish,  telling  him  these  two  were 
friendly  visitors,  and  wished  to  know 
what  had  been  done  to  him.  Quietly 
and  sadly  the  man  in  the  bed  spoke. 
Sentence  by  sentence  the  priest  trans- 
lated it  for  Hilda  and  the  banker.  On 
Sunday  morning,  the  peasant,  Leopold 


180  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

de  Man,  of  Number  90  Hovenier  Straat, 
Alost,  was  hiding  in  the  house  of  his 
sister,  in  the  cellar.  The  Germans  made 
a  fire  of  the  table  and  chairs  in  the  upper 
room.  Then  catching  sight  of  Leopold, 
they  struck  him  with  the  butt  of  their 
guns,  and  forced  him  to  pass  through 
the  fire.  Then,  taking  him  outside,  they 
struck  him  to  the  ground,  and  gave  him 
a  blow  over  the  head  with  a  gun  stock, 
and  a  cut  of  the  bayonet  which  pierced 
his  thigh,  all  the  way  through. 

Slowly,  carefully,  he  went  on  with  his 
statement : 

"In  spite  of  my  wound  they  make  me 
pass  between  their  lines,  giving  me  still 
more  blows  of  the  gun-butt  in  the  back, 
in  order  to  make  me  march.  There  are 
seventeen  or  eighteen  persons  with  me. 
They  place  us  in  front  of  their  lines  and 
menace  us  with  their  revolvers,  crying 
out  that  they  will  make  us  pay  for  the 
losses  they  have  suffered  at  Alost.  So, 
we  march  in  front  of  the  troops. 


THE   AMERICAN  181 

"When  the  battle  begins,  we  throw  our- 
selves on  our  faces  to  the  ground,  but 
they  force  us  to  rise  again.  At  a 
certain  moment,  when  the  Germans  are 
obliged  to  retire,  we  succeed  in  escaping 
down  side  streets." 

Hilda  was  watching  Hinchcliffe  while 
the  peasant  and  the  priest  were  speak- 
ing. Curiously  and  sympathetically  she 
watched  him.  A  change  had  come  over 
the  man:  something  arrogant  had  left 
him.  Even  his  voice  had  changed,  as  he 
leaned  forward  and  asked,  "What  does 
he  say?"  The  banker  had  pulled  out  a 
black  leather  note-book,  and  was  taking 
down  the  translation  as  the  priest  gave  it. 
Something  kindly  welled  up  inside  Hilda 
toward  him.  Something  spoke  to  her 
heart  that  it  was  the  crust  of  him  that  had 
fallen  away.  She  had  misjudged  him.  In 
her  swift  way  she  had  been  unjust.  Her 
countryman  was  not  hard,  only  unseeing. 
Things  hadn't  been  brought  to  his  at- 
tention. She  was  humbly  glad  that  she 


182  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

had  cared  to  show  him  where  the  right 
of  things  lay.  Her  fault  was  greater 
than  his.  He  had  only  been  blind.  Dis- 
tance had  hidden  the  truth  from  him. 
But  she  had  been  severe  with  him  to 
his  face.  She  had  committed  the  sin  of 
pride,  the  sin  of  feeling  a  spiritual 
superiority. 

"If  you  please,  come  to  the  other  side 
of  the  room,"  said  the  priest,  leading 
the  way  to  the  cot  of  a  peasant,  whose 
cheeks  had  the  angry  red  spot  of  fever. 
He  was  Frans  Meulebroeck,  of  Number 
62  Drie  Sleutelstraat,  Alost.  Sometimes 
in  loud  bursts  of  terror  and  suffering, 
and  then  falling  back  into  a  hopeless 
pain-laden  monotone,  he  told  his  story. 

"They  broke  open  the  door  of  my 
home,"  he  said;  "they  seized  me,  and 
knocked  me  down.  In  front  of  my  door, 
the  corpse  of  a  German  lay  stretched 
out.  The  Germans  said  to  me,  'You  are 
going  to  pay  for  that  to  us.'  A  few 
moments  later,  they  gave  me  a  bayonet 


THE    AMERICAN  183 

cut  in  my  leg.  They  sprinkled  naphtha 
in  my  house,  and  set  it  afire.  My  son 

• 

was  struck  down  in  the  street,  and  I  was 
marched  in  front  of  the  German  troops. 
I  do  not  know  even  yet  the  fate  of  my 
son." 

Gradually  as  the  peasant  talked,  the 
time  of  his  suffering  came  upon  him. 
His  eyes  began  to  see  it  again  in  front 
of  him.  They  became  fixed  and  wild, 
the  white  of  them  visible.  His  voice 
was  shrill  and  broken  with  sobs. 
There  was  a  helpless  unresisting  agony 
in  his  tone  and  the  look  on  his  face. 

"My  boy!"  he  said.  "I  haven't  seen 
him."  His  body  shook  with  sobbing. 

"Enough,"  said  the  priest.  "Bonne 
chance,  comrade;  courage." 

In  the  presence  of  the  priest  and  of  the 
Sister,  the  two  peasants  signed  each  man 
his  statement,  Leopold  firmly,  the  fe- 
vered Frans  making  his  mark  with  a 
trembling  hand.  Hinchcliffe  shut  his  note- 
book and  put  it  back  into  his  pocket. 


184  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

The  little  group  passed  into  the  next 
room,  where  the  wounded  women  were 
gathered.  A  Sister  led  Hilda  to  the 
bedside  of  a  very  old  woman,  perhaps 
eighty  years  old.  The  eyes  were  closed, 
the  thin  white  hair  straggled  across  the 
pillow.  There  was  no  motion  to  the 
worn-out  body,  except  for  faint  breathing. 

"Cut  through  the  thigh  with  a  bayo- 
net," said  the  Sister. 

Hilda  stepped  away  on  tiptoe,  and 
looked  across  the  ward.  There,  rising 
out  of  the  bedclothes,  was  a  little  head,  a 
child's  head,  crowned  with  the  lightest  of 
hair.  Gay  and  vivid  it  gleamed  in  that 
room  of  pain.  It  was  hair  of  the  very 
color  of  Hilda's  own.  The  child  was 
propped  up  in  bed,  and  half  bent  over, 
as  if  she  had  been  broken  at  the  breast- 
bone. It  was  the  attitude  of  a  bent  old 
body,  weary  with  age.  And  yet,  the  tiny 
oval  face  of  soft  coloring,  and  the  bright 
hair,  seemed  made  for  happiness. 

Clear    across    the    room,    otherwise    so 


THE    AMERICAN  185 

silent  in  its  patient  misery,  there  came 
a  little  whistling  from  the  body  of  the 
child.  With  each  give  of  the  breath,  the 
sound  was  forced  out.  The  wheezing, 
as  if  the  falling  breath  caught  on  some 
jagged  bit  of  bone,  and  struggled  for  a 
moment  to  tear  itself  free,  hurt  Hilda. 

The  face  of  the  little  girl  was  heavy 
with  stupor,  the  eyes  half  closed.  Pain 
had  done  its  utmost,  and  a  partial  un- 
consciousnes  was  spreading  over  troubled 
mind  and  tortured  body.  The  final  re- 
lease was  close  at  hand. 

Hinchcliffe  had  stepped  up.  There 
was  an  intent  look  in  his  face  as  he 
watched  the  child.  Then  the  man's  ex- 
pression softened.  The  cunning  lines 
about  the  mouth  took  on  something  of 
tenderness.  The  shrewd,  appraising  eyes 
lost  their  glint  under  a  film  of  tears. 
He  went  over  to  the  little  one,  and 
touched  her  very  lightly  on  the  hair. 
It  was  bright  and  gay,  and  incongruous 
on  a  body  that  was  so  visibly  dying. 


186  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

It  gave  a  pleasure  of  sunlight  on  what 
was  doomed.  Still  she  went  on  whist- 
ling through  her  broken  body,  and  with 
each  breath  she  gave  a  low  murmur  of 
pain. 

"Sister,"  said  Hilda,  to  one  of  the 
women,  "what  is  it  with  the  child?  She 
is  very  ill?'* 

"She  is  dying,"  said  the  nurse.  "Her 
back  is  slashed  open  to  the  bone  with 
bayonets.  She  was  placed  in  front  of  the 
troops,  and  they  cut  her,  when  she  fell 
in  fright." 

"And  her  breathing?"  asked  Hilda. 
"I  can  hear  her  with  each  breath." 

"Yes,  it  is  hard  with  her.  Her  body 
is  torn,  and  the  breath  is  loud  as  it 
comes.  It  will  soon  be  over.  She  will 
not  suffer  long." 

Hilda  and  her  companion  stepped  out 
into  the  open  air,  and  climbed  into  the 
waiting  motor.  The  banker  was  crying 
and  swearing  softly  to  himself. 

"The    little    children    who    have    died, 


THE    AMERICAN  187 

what  becomes  of  them?"  said  Hilda. 
"Will  they  have  a  chance  to  play  some- 
where? And  the  children  still  in  pain, 
here  and  everywhere  in  Belgium  —  will  it 
be  made  up  to  them?  Will  a  million  of 
indemnity  give  them  back  their  play- 
time? That  little  girl  whom  you 
touched  — ! 

"The  hair,"  he  said,  "did  you  see  her 
hair?  The  same  color  as  yours." 

"I  know,"  said  Hilda,  "I  saw  myself 
in  her  place.  I  feel  that  I  could  go  out 
and  kill." 

"It  was  the  hair,"  repeated  the  banker. 
"My  little  daughter's  hair  is  the  color 
of  yours.  That  was  why  I  let  you  say 
those  things  to  me  that  evening  in 
London.  I  could  not  sleep  that  night 
for  thinking  of  all  you  said.  And  when 
I  looked  across  the  room  just  now,  I 
thought  it  was  my  daughter  lying  there. 
For  a  moment,  I  thought  I  saw  my 
daughter." 


THE  BONFIRE 

We  were  prisoners,  together  —  twenty  - 
seven  peasants  and  three  of  us  that  had 
been  too  curious  of  the  enemy's  camp. 
We  were  huddled  in  the  dirt  of  a  field, 
with  four  sentries  over  us,  and  three  thou- 
sand soldiers  round  about  us.  Just  across 
the  country  road,  twenty-six  little  yellow- 
brick  houses  were  blazing,  the  homes  of  the 
peasants  of  Melle.  Each  house  was  a 
separate  torch,  for  they  had  been  carefully 
primed  with  oil.  The  light  of  them,  and 
almost  the  heat,  was  on  our  faces.  It 
was  a  clear,  warm  evening.  The  fires  of 
the  cottages  burned  high.  A  full  moon 
rose  blood-red  on  the  horizon,  climbed  to 
the  dome  and  went  across  the  sky  to  the 
south-west.  Two  dogs,  chained  in  the  yard 
of  a  burning  house,  howled  all  night.  The 
peasant  lying  next  us  watched  his  home 
burn  to  pieces.  It  was  straight  across 


190  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE   WARS 

from  us.  A  soldier  came  to  tell  him  that 
his  wife  was  wounded  but  not  dead.  He 
lay  through  the  night,  motionless,  and  not 
once  did  he  turn  his  eyes  away  from  the 
blaze  of  his  home.  Petrol  burns  slowly 
and  thoroughly. 

In  the  early  morning,  soldiers  with 
stretchers  came  marching  down  the  road. 
They  turned  in  at  the  smouldering  cot- 
tages. From  the  ruins  of  the  little  house 
which  the  peasant  had  watched  so  intently, 
three  bodies  were  carried.  He  broke  into 
a  long,  slow  sobbing. 


VIII 
THE  WAR  BABY 

BABY?"   cried   Hilda  in  amaze- 
ment. 

"A  baby,  my  dear,"  repeated 
Mrs.  Bracher  with  emphasis.  "Come, 
hurry  up!  We're  wanted  tout  de  suite." 

The  women  had  been  sitting  quite 
peacefully  after  supper.  A  jerk  at  the 
bell  cord,  a  tiny  tinkle,  and  Mrs.  Bracher 
had  answered  the  door.  A  big  breath- 
less civilian  stood  there.  He  said  — 

"Please,  the  Madame  Doctor,  quick. 
The  baby  is  coming." 

These  astonishing  peasants!  Hilda 
could  never  get  over  her  wonder  at 
their  stolidity,  their  endless  patience, 
their  matter-of-fact  way  of  carrying  on 
life  under  a  cataclysm.  They  went  on 
with  their  spading  in  the  fields,  while 
shrapnel  was  pinging.  They  trotted  up 


192  YOUNG   HILDA   AT  THE   WARS 

and  down  a  road  that  was  pock-marked 
with  shell-holes.  They  hung  out  their 
washings  where  machine-gun  bullets 
could  aerate  them.  The  fierce,  early 
weeks  of  shattering  bombardment  had 
sent  the  villagers  scurrying  for  shelter  to 
places  farther  to  the  west.  And  for  a 
time,  Pervyse  had  been  occupied  only 
by  soldiers  and  the  three  nurses.  But 
soon  the  civilians  came  trickling  back. 
They  were  tired  of  strange  quarters,  and 
homesick  for  their  own.  There  were 
now  more  than  two  hundred  peasants 
in  Pervyse  —  men,  women  and  children. 
The  children,  regardless  of  shell  fire, 
scoured  the  fields  for  shrapnel  bullets 
and  bits  of  shells.  They  brought  their 
findings  to  the  nurses,  and  received 
pieces  of  chocolate  in  return.  There 
was  a  family  of  five  children,  in  steps, 
who  wore  bright  red  hoods.  They  liked 
to  come  and  be  nursed.  The  women 
had  from  six  to  a  dozen  peasants  a  day, 
tinkling  the  bell  for  treatment.  Some 


THE    WAR    BABY  193 

came  out  of  curiosity.  To  these  was  fed 
castor-oil.  One  dose  cured  them.  They 
came  with  every  sort  of  ailment.  A  store- 
keeper, who  kept  on  selling  rock  candy, 
had  a  heel  that  was  "bad"  from  shrap- 
nel. One  mite  of  a  boy  had  his  right 
hand  burned,  and  the  wound  continued 
to  suppurate.  He  dabbled  in  ditch- 
water,  and  always  returned  to  Hilda 
with  the  bandage  very  wet  and  dirty. 

Here  was  their  home  —  Belgium,  flow- 
ering and  happy,  or  Belgium,  black  and 
perishing.  Still  it  is  Belgium,  the  home- 
land. Why  take  on  the  ugly  hazards  of 
exile? 

If  your  husband  is  ill  and  broken, 
you  stay  by  him.  He  is  your  man.  So 
with  the  land  of  your  birth,  the  village 
where  you  are  one  with  the  soil.  You 
stay  and  suffer,  and  meantime  you  live. 
Still  you  plant  and  plough,  though  the 
guns  are  loud  in  the  night,  and  Les 
Bosches  just  over  the  meadow.  And 
here  was  one  of  these  women  in  the 


194  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

wrecked,  charred  village  of  Pervyse  carry- 
ing on  the  great,  natural  process  of  life 
as  unperturbed  as  if  her  home  was  in  a 
valley  of  peace. 

The  three  women  ran  over  to  a  little 
house  two  hundred  yards  down  the  road. 
One  wall  of  it  was  bullet-chipped,  one 
room  of  it  a  wreck  from  a  spent  obus. 
But,  for  the  rest,  it  was  a  livable  little 
place,  and  here  was  gathered  a  Flemish 
family.  The  event  was  half  over,  as 
Mrs.  Bracher,  closely  followed  by  Scotch 
and  Hilda,  rushed  in.  The  mother,  fully 
dressed,  was  lying  on  a  wooden  bed  that 
fitted  into  an  alcove.  She  was  typically 
Flemish,  of  high  cheek-bones  and  very 
red  cheeks.  The  entire  family  was 
grouped  about  the  bed  —  a  boy  of  twelve 
years,  a  girl  of  nineteen,  and  a  girl  of 
three.  Attending  the  case,  was  a  little 
old  woman,  the  grandmother,  wearing  a 
knitted  knobby  bonnet,  sitting  high  on 
the  top  of  her  head  and  tied  under  her 
chin  —  a  conical  frame  for  her  pert,  dark 


THE    WAR    BABY  195 

eyes  and  firm  mouth.  She  was  a  tiny 
woman,  every  detail  of  her  in  miniature, 
clearly  defined,  except  the  heavy,  noisy 
wooden  shoes.  She  carried  in  her  per- 
sonality an  air  of  important  indignation. 
With  the  confidence  of  a  lifetime  of  ob- 
stetrical experience,  she  drew  from  her 
pocket  a  brown  string,  coarse  and  dirty, 
and  tied  up  the  newcomer's  navel.  It 
was  little  the  nurses  were  allowed  to 
help.  Though  a  trained  and  certificated 
midwife,  Mrs.  Bracher  was  edged  out 
of  the  ministration  by  the  small,  deter- 
mined grandmother,  who  looked  anger 
and  scorn  out  of  her  little  black  eyes 
upon  the  three.  She  resented  their  com- 
ing. Antiseptic  gauze  and  hot-water  bot- 
tles were  as  alien  as  the  Germans  to  her. 
So  "Pervyse"  entered  this  world.  Noth- 
ing could  hold  him  back,  neither  shell 
nor  bayonets.  He  had  slipped  through 
the  net  of  death  which  men  were  so 
busily  weaving.  There  he  was,  a  matter 
of  fact  —  a  vital,  lusty,  shapeless  fact. 


196  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

To  that  little  creature  was  given  the 
future,  and  he  was  stronger  than  the 
artillery.  By  all  the  laws,  vibrations  of 
fear  ought  to  have  passed  into  the  tiny 
body.  His  consciousness,  it  would  seem, 
must  be  a  nest  of  horrors.  Instead  of 
that,  his  cry  had  the  insistence  of 
health.  His  solemnity  was  as  abysmal 
as  that  of  a  child  of  peace. 

When  the  girls  visited  "Pervyse"  next 
morning,  the  grandmother  was  nursing 
him  with  sugar  and  water  from  a  quart 
bottle.  She  had  him  dressed  in  dark 
blue  calico.  Thereafter  twice  a  day  they 
called  upon  him,  and  each  time  Hilda 
carried  snowy  linen,  hoping  to  win  the 
grandmother.  But  the  old  lady  was  firm, 
and  "Pervyse"  was  to  thrive,  looking 
all  the  redder,  inside  blue  calico.  The 
mother  was  a  good  mother,  sweet  and  con- 
stant. Very  slowly,  the  nurses  won  her 
confidence  and  the  grandmother's  respect. 

"Do  come  away,"  urged  Hilda.  "Let 
me  take  you  all  back  to  La  Panne,  where 


THE    WAR    BABY  197 

it  is  safer.  Give  'Pervyse'  his  chance. 
It  is  senseless  to  live  here  in  this  shed 
under  shell  fire.  Some  day,  the  guns  will 
get  you,  and  then  it  will  be  too  late." 

But  always  they  refused,  mother,  and 
brother,  and  big  and  little  sister,  and 
grandmother.  The  village  was  their  place. 
The  shed  was  their  home. 

Hilda  brought  her  beautiful  big  ambu- 
lance to  their  door.  There  was  room 
enough  inside  for  them  all  to  go  to- 
gether, with  their  bundles  of  household 
goods.  And  the  mother  smiled,  saying: 

"The  shells  will  spare  me.  They  will 
not  hurt  me." 

"You  refuse  me  to-day,"  replied  Hilda, 
"but  to-morrow  I  shall  come  again  to 
take  you  away.  I  will  take  you  to  a 
new,  safe  home." 

Very  early  the  next  morning,  Hilda 
heard  the  sick  crumble  that  meant  the 
crunching  of  one  more  dwelling.  She 
hurried  to  the  door,  and  looked  down 


198  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

the  road.  The  place  of  the  new  birth 
had  tumbled,  and  a  thick  smoke  was 
rising  from  the  wreck.  She  ran  faster 
than  she  had  ever  run  for  her  own  safety. 
She  came  to  the  little  home  in  a  ruin  of 
plaster  and  glass  and  brick-dust.  De- 
struction, long  overdue,  had  fallen  out 
of  the  sunny  blue  sky  on  the  group  of 
reckless  survivors  in  that  doomed  village. 
The  soldiers  were  searching  in  the  smok- 
ing litter  for  bodies.  Big  sister  and 
little  sister  and  brother  were  dead,  and 
the  little  old  grandmother.  The  mother, 
with  shell  wounds  at  her  nursing  breasts, 
was  dying.  Only  "Pervyse"  was  living 
and  to  live.  By  a  miracle  of  selection, 
he  lay  in  the  wreck  of  his  house  and 
the  grave  of  his  people  —  one  foot  half 
off,  but  otherwise  a  survivor  of  the  shell 
that  had  fallen  and  burst  inside  his 
home. 

Swiftly  Hilda  in  her  car,  carried  mother 
and  child  to  La  Panne  to  the  great 
military  hospital.  The  mother  died  in 


THE    WAR    BABY  199 

two   hours   on   the   operating   table,   and 
"Pervyse"  was  alone  in  a  world  at  war. 

The  story  and  fame  of  him  spread 
through  the  last  city  left  to  the  Belgians. 
All  the  rest  of  their  good  land  was 
trampled  by  the  alien  and  marred  by 
shell-fire  and  petrol.  Here,  alone  in 
Flanders,  there  was  still  music  in  the 
streets,  even  if  it  was  often  a  dead 
march.  And  here  life  was  still  normal 
and  orderly.  "Pervyse"  found  shelter 
in  the  military  hospital  where  his  mother 
had  come  only  to  die.  He  was  the 
youngest  wounded  Belgian  in  all  the 
wards.  They  put  him  in  a  private  room 
with  a  famous  English  Colonel,  and 
they  called  the  two  "Big  Tom"  and 
"Little  Tom."  The  blue  calico  was 
changed  for  white  things  and  "Pervyse" 
had  a  deep,  soft  cradle  and  more  visitors 
than  he  cared  to  see. 

The  days  of  his  danger  and  flight  were 
evil  days  in  Pervyse,  for  the  guns  grew 


200  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

busier  and  more  deadly.  There  came 
a  last  day  for  the  famous  little  dressing- 
station  of  the  women.  It  began  with 
trouble  at  the  trenches.  Two  boys  of 
nineteen  years  were  brought  in  to  the 
nurses.  One  of  them  was  carrying  the 
brains  of  a  dead  comrade  on  his  pocket. 
A  shell  had  burst  in  their  trench,  giving 
them  head  wounds.  They  died  in  the 
hall.  They  had  served  two  days  at 
the  front.  The  women  placed  them  on 
stretchers  in  the  kitchen,  and  covered 
their  faces,  and  left  them  in  peace.  A 
brief  peace,  for  a  shell  found  the  kitchen, 
and  the  blue  fumes  of  it  puffed  into  the 
room  where  the  women  were  sitting. 
The  orderly  and  four  soldier  friends 
came  running  in,  holding  their  eyes. 
When  Hilda  entered  the  kitchen,  she 
saw  that  the  shell  had  hit  just  above 
those  quiet  bodies,  bringing  the  rafters 
and  glass  and  brick  upon  them.  A 
beam,  from  the  rafter,  had  been  driven 
into  the  breast  of  one  of  the  boys  — 


THE    WAR    BABY  201 

transfixing  him  as  if  by  a  lance.  Shells 
were  breaking  in  the  road,  the  garden, 
the  field  and  the  near-by  houses,  every 
five  seconds.  In  her  own  house,  bricks 
were  strewn  about,  and  the  windows 
smashed  in.  A  large  hole,  in  a  shed 
back  of  the  house,  marked  the  flight  of 
a  shell,  and  behind  it  lay  a  dead  man 
who  had  taken  refuge  there. 

A  Belgian  had  driven  up  their  car  a 
moment  before  and  it  was  standing  at 
the  door.  One  soldier  started  to  the 
car  —  a  shell  drove  him  back  —  a  second 
dash  and  he  made  it,  turned  the  car, 
and  the  women  darted  in.  They  sped 
down  the  road  to  the  edge  of  the  village, 
and  here  the  nurses  found  shelter.  Later 
that  day  the  Colonel  handed  them  a 
written  order  to  evacuate  Pervyse,  lent 
them  men  to  help,  and  gave  them  twenty 
minutes  in  which  to  pack  and  depart. 
They  returned  to  their  smashed  house, 
and  piled  out  their  household  goods. 
They  left  in  the  ambulance  with  all 


YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

the  soldiers  cheering  them.  They  were 
a  sad  little  lot.  So  the  loyal  four 
months  of  service  were  ended  under  a 
few  hours  of  gun-fire,  and  Hilda  and 
her  friends  had  to  follow  "Pervyse" 
to  his  new  home. 

As  she  went  down  the  road,  she  took 
one  last  look  at  the  shattered  place.  No 
house  in  her  earthly  history  had  con- 
centrated so  many  memories.  There  she 
had  put  off  the  care-free  girl,  and 
achieved  her  womanhood,  as  if  at  a 
stroke.  There  she  and  her  friends  had 
healed  a  thousand  soldiers.  They  had 
welcomed  the  Queen,  princes,  generals, 
brave  officers  soon  to  die,  famous  artists 
under  arms,  laughing  peasant  soldiers, 
the  great  and  the  obscure,  such  a  society 
gathered  under  the  vast  pressure  of  a 
world-war  as  had  seldom  graced  the 
"At-Homes"  of  an  Iowa  girl.  There  she 
had  won  fame,  and  a  dearer  thing  yet, 
honor,  which  needs  not  to  be  known  in 
order  to  shed  its  lonely  comfort.  She 


THE    WAR    BABY  203 

was  leaving  it  all,  forever,  in  that  heap 
of  plaster  and  crumbling  brick. 

She  had  rarely  had  him  out  of  mind 
since  that  experience  in  Wetteren  Con- 
vent, when  they  two  had  visited  the  little 
girl  who  lay  dying  of  her  bayonet  wounds. 
But  it  was  a  full  five  months  since  she 
had  seen  him. 

"I  had  to  come  back,"  said  Hinch- 
cliffe;  "New  York  seemed  out  of  it.  I 
know  there  is  work  for  me  here  —  some 
little  thing  I  can  do  to  help  you  all. 

"What  luck?"   he  added. 

"A  shell  has  been  following  me 
around,"  replied  Hilda.  "So  far,  it  has 
aways  called  too  late,  or  missed  me  by 
a  few  feet  of  masonry.  But  it's  on  my 
trail.  It  took  the  windows  out  of  my 
room  at  a  doctor's  house  in  Furnes. 
Later  on,  it  went  clean  through  my  little 
room  up  over  a  tailor's  shop.  In  Pervyse 
we  had  our  Poste  de  Secours  in  the 
Burgomaster's  house.  One  morning  we 


204  YOUNG   HILDA   AT   THE    WARS 

had  stepped  out  for  a  little  air  —  we 
were  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  down 
the  road  —  when  a  big  shell  broke  in  the 
house.  And  now  our  last  home  in  Per- 
vyse  is  blown  to  pieces.  Luck  is  good 
to  me." 

Hinchcliffe  took  his  place,  and  a  strong 
place  it  was,  in  the  strange  life  of  La 
Panne.  A  word  from  him  smoothed  out 
tangles.  The  Etat  Major  approved  of 
him.  He  was  twice  arrested  as  a  spy, 
and  enjoyed  the  experience  hugely.  At 
one  time,  there  was  a  deficiency  of  tires 
of  the  right  make,  and  he  put  a  rush 
order  clear  across  the  Atlantic  and  had 
the  consignment  over  in  record  time. 
He  cut  through  the  red  tape  of  the  trans- 
port service,  red  tape  that  had  been 
annoying  even  the  established  hospitals. 
He  imported  comforts  for  the  helpers. 
There  was  a  special  brand  of  tea  which 
the  English  nurses  were  missing.  So 
there  was  nothing  for  it,  but  his  London 
agent  must  accompany  the  lot  in  person 


THE    WAR    BABY  205 

to  La  Panne.  There  was  something  rest- 
less, consuming,  in  his  activity. 

'Your  maternity  hospital  is  a  great 
idea,"  said  Hinchcliffe  to  Hilda,  during 
one  of  their  talks.  "I've  cabled  for 
five  thousand  pounds.  That  will  start 
things." 

The  maternity  hospital  had  been  sug- 
gested to  Hilda  by  the  plight  of  little 
"Pervyse,"  and  the  hundreds  of  other 
babies  of  the  war  whom  she  had  seen, 
and  the  hapless  peasant  mothers.  Mili- 
tary hospitals  are  for  soldiers,  not  for 
expectant  mothers  or  orphaned  children, 
and  "Pervyse's"  days  of  glory  were  end- 
ing. Reluctantly  Colonel  Depage,  head 
surgeon  of  the  hospital,  had  told  Hilda 
that  "Pervyse"  must  seek  another  home. 
His  room  was  needed  for  fighting  men. 

"Let  me  have  him  christened  first?" 
asked  Hilda,  and  the  great  Belgian  phy- 
sician had  consented. 

It  took  her  a  week  to  make  ready  the 
ritual,  but  the  morning  came  at  last. 


206  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

"To-day  we  christen  'Pervyse,'"  said 
Hilda  to  the  banker.  "Will  you  come?" 

"It  isn't  just  my  sort  of  speciality," 
replied  Hinchcliffe,  "but  of  course  I'll 
come,  if  you'll  show  me  the  moves." 

Hilda  had  chosen  for  the  ceremony  a 
village  church  on  the  Dixmude  road. 
They  put  all  the  little  necessary  bundles 
of  baby  life  into  Hilda's  ambulance  —  a 
packet  of  little  shawls,  and  intimate 
clothing,  a  basket  of  things  to  eat,  a 
great  christening  cake,  frosted  by  Dun- 
kirk's leading  confectioner,  a  can  of 
chocolate  and  of  cream,  candy  baskets  of 
sweets.  It  was  Sunday  —  a  cloudless, 
innocent  day.  They  dodged  through 
Fumes,  the  ruined,  and  came  at  length 
to  the  village  of  their  quest.  They 
entered  the  convent,  and  found  a  neat, 
clean  room  of  eight  beds.  Two  babies 
had  arrived.  Six  mothers  were  expec- 
tant. In  charge  of  the  room  was  a  red- 
cheeked,  black-eyed  nurse,  a  Flemish 
girl,  motherly  with  the  babies.  Hilda 


THE    WAR    BABY  207 

dressed  "Pervyse"  in  a  long,  white, 
immaculate  dress,  and  a  gossamer  shawl, 
and  pinned  upon  him  a  gold  pin.  She 
set  the  table  in  the  convent  —  the  cake 
in  the  center  of  the  table,  with  one 
candle,  and  snowy  blossoms  from  a  plum 
tree. 

Then  the  party  started  for  the  church: 
fifteen-year-old  Rene,  the  Belgian  boy 
scout  who  was  to  serve  as  godfather, 
giggling;  the  apple-cheeked  Flemish  girl 
carrying  "Pervyse";  Hilda  and  Hinch- 
cliffe  closely  following.  They  walked 
through  the  village  street  past  laughing 
soldiers  who  called  out,  " Les  Anglais!" 
They  entered  the  church  through  the 
left  door.  A  puff  of  damp  air  blew  into 
their  faces.  In  the  chancel  stood  a  stack 
of  soldiers'  bicycles.  They  kneeled  and 
waited  for  the  Cure.  In  the  nave,  old 
peasant  women  were  nodding  and  dip- 
ping, and  telling  their  beads.  The  nurse 
handed  the  baby  to  Hilda.  Rene  giggled. 
Three  small  children  wandered  near  and 


208  YOUNG   HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

stared.  On  the  right  side  of  the  church 
was  heaped  a  bundle  of  straw,  and  three 
rosy  soldiers  emerged  who  had  been 
sleeping  there.  They  winked  at  the 
pretty  Flemish  nurse.  The  church  for 
them  was  a  resting-place,  between  trench 
service. 

The  old  Cure  entered  with  his  young 
assistant.  The  youth  was  dudish,  with 
a  business  suit,  and  a  very  high,  straight 
collar  that  struck  his  chin.  The  Cure 
was  in  long,  black  robes,  with  skirts  — 
a  yellow  man,  gray-haired,  his  mouth  a 
thin,  straight  slit,  almost  toothless.  His 
eyebrows  turned  up,  as  if  the  face  were 
being  pulled.  His  heavy  ears  lay  back 
against  his  head,  large  wads  of  cotton- 
wool in  them.  He  talked  with  the 
nurse,  inquiring  for  the  baby's  name. 
There  were  a  half-dozen  names  for  the 
mite  —  family  names  of  father  and 
mother,  so  that  there  might  be  a  sur- 
vival of  lines  once  so  numerous.  Rene's 
name,  too,  was  affixed.  The  Cure  wrote 


THE    WAR    BABY  209 

the  names  down  on  a  slip  of  paper,  and 
inserted  it  in  his  prayer-book.  The  serv- 
ice proceeded  in  Latin  and  Flemish. 

Then  "Pervyse"  was  carried,  behind 
the  bicycles,  to  a  small  room,  with  the 
font.  Holy  water  was  poured  into  a 
bowl.  The  old  priest,  muttering,  put 
his  thumb  into  the  water,  and  then  be- 
hind each  ear  of  the  baby,  and  at  the 
nape  of  the  neck.  At  the  touch  on  the 
neck  "Pervyse"  howled.  The  priest's 
hand  shook,  so  that  he  jabbed  the  wrong 
place,  and  repeated  the  stroke.  Then 
the  thumb  was  dipped  again,  and  crossed 
on  the  forehead,  then  touched  on  the 
nose  and  eyes  and  chin.  Between  the 
dippings,  the  aged  man  read  from  his 
book,  and  the  assistant  responded.  To 
Hinchcliffe,  standing  at  a  little  distance, 
the  group  made  a  strange  picture  - 
"Pervyse"  wriggling  and  sometimes 
weeping;  Hilda  "Shsh,  Shysh,  Shshing"; 
Rene  nudging  the  Flemish  girl,  and  gig- 
gling; the  soldiers  peeping  from  the 


210  YOUNG  HILDA  AT  THE   WARS 

straw;  the  children,  attracted  by  the 
outcries  of  "Pervyse,"  drawing  closer; 
aged  worshippers  continuing  their  dron- 
ing. "Pervyse"  was  held  directly  over 
the  bowl  and  the  slightly  warmed  water 
descended  on  him  in  volume.  At  this 
he  shouted  with  anger.  His  head  was 
dried  and  his  white  hood  clapped  on. 
He  was  borne  to  another  room  where 
from  a  cupboard  the  Cure  took  down  the 
sacred  pictures,  and  put  them  over  the 
child's  neck.  Rene  sat  on  the  small 
stove  in  the  corner  of  the  room,  and  it 
caved  in  with  a  clatter  of  iron.  But  no 
side-issue  could  mar  the  ceremony  which 
was  now  complete.  "Pervyse"  had  a 
name  and  a  religion. 

Then  it  was  back  again  to  the  convent 
for  the  cake,  inviting  the  good  old  Cure 
to  be  one  of  the  christening  party. 
"Pervyse,"  his  hand  guided,  cut  the 
christening  cake.  The  candle  was  lighted. 

As  the  christening  party  sped  home- 
ward to  La  Panne,  Hilda  looked  back. 


THE    WAR    BABY  211 

High  overhead  on  the  tower  of  the 
church,  two  soldiers  and  two  officers 
with  field  glasses  were  stationed,  sig- 
nalling to  their  field  battery. 

Without  a  mishap,  they  had  returned 
to  the  military  hospital,  and  "Pervyse," 
thoroughly  awakened  by  the  ceremony, 
had  been  restored  to  his  white  crib. 
To  soften  his  mood,  his  bottle  of  supper 
had  been  handed  to  him  a  little  ahead  of 
time.  But,  unwilling  to  lay  aside  the 
prominence  which  had  been  his,  all  day, 
he  brandished  the  bottle  as  if  it  were  a 
weapon  instead  of  a  soporific. 

"A  pretty  little  service,"  said  Hilda, 
"but  there  was  something  pathetic  to  it. 
The  little  kid  looked  so  lonely  in  the 
damp  old  church.  And  no  one  there 
that  really  belonged  to  him.  And  to- 
morrow or  the  next  day  or  some  day, 
they'll  get  the  range  of  this  place,  and 
then  little  "Pervyse"  will  join  his  mother 
and  his  brother  and  sisters.  With  us 


212  YOUNG   HILDA  AT   THE   WARS 

older  ones,  it  doesn't  so  much  matter. 
We've  had  our  bit  of  walk  and  talk  and 
so  good-by.  But  with  a  child  it's  dif- 
ferent. All  that  love  and  pain  for  noth- 
ing. One  more  false  start." 

"By  God,  no!"  said  Hinchcliffe.  "'Per- 
vyse'  shall  have  his  chance,  the  best 
chance  a  kid  ever  had.  I've  got  to  get 
back  to  America.  There'll  be  a  smash 
if  I  don't.  I'm  a  month  late  on  the  job, 
as  it  is.  But  'Pervyse'  goes  with  me. 
Little  Belgium  is  going  to  get  his  chance." 

'You  mean  — "  said  Hilda. 

"Certainly,  I  do,"  replied  the  banker. 
"I  mean  that  we're  going  to  bring  that 
kid  up  as  good  as  if  war  was  a  dream. 
We're  going  to  make  him  glad  he's  alive. 
He's  going  back  to  America  with  me. 
Will  you  come?" 

"Why,"  said  Hilda,  her  eyes  filling, 
"what  do  you  mean?" 

"I  mean  that  I  need  you.  Show  me 
how  to  put  this  thing,  that  we've  been 
doing  here,  into  New  York.  It's  a  dif- 


THE    WAR    BABY  213 

ferent  world  after  the  war.  You  have 
often  said  it.  America  mustn't  be  be- 
hind. I  want  to  catch  up  with  these 
Red  Cross  chauffeurs.  I  want  our  crowd 
in  Wall  Street  to  be  in  on  the  fun.  Come 
on  and  help." 

"I  don't  know  what  to  say,"  began 
Hilda.  "I  shall  miss  you  so.  The  boys 
in  the  ward  will  miss  you,  the  babies  will 
miss  you."  She  laughed.  "I  can't  come 
just  now.  There  is  so  much  work,  and 
worse  ahead." 

"Later,  you  will  come?"  he  pleaded. 
He  turned  to  the  child  who  was  wielding 
his  bottle  as  a  hammer  on  the  foot  of  the 
bed,  and  lifted  him  shoulder  high. 

"Remember,"  he  said,  as  the  bottle 
was  thumped  on  his  head,  "Pervyse* 
and  I  will  be  waiting." 

The  bottle  fell  on  the  floor,  and  the 
outraged  glass  splintered,  and  "Pervyse's" 
supper  went  trickling  down  the  cracks. 

"You  see,"  said  the  banker,  "we  are 
helpless  without  you." 


UC SOUTJ«NflEGjpWJ.  U8RARY  FAOUTY 


A     000042118    o 


